According to a recently released analysis of 28 Turkish textbooks, that country’s education system, which was once a model of secularism that taught evolution, cultural openness, tolerance toward minorities, and Kurdish as a minority language, has increasingly replaced those concepts with notions of jihad, martyrdom in battle, and a neo-Ottoman and pan-Turkist ethno-religious worldview in its curricula.
The report, by the Israeli research group Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se)…assert that recent curricula — in a NATO country that has long aspired to EU membership — include anti-American and anti-Armenian messages, display “sympathy for the motivations of ISIS and Al-Qaeda,” focus exclusively on Sunni Muslim teachings, and replace electives such as Kurdish with religious courses.
The textbooks promote concepts like “Turkish World Domination” and the Turkish or Ottoman “Ideal of the World Order,” the report said.
“Education is a prime pillar in [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s efforts to drape the country in the cloak of Sharia… The Ministry of Education has been pressuring citizens to conform to conservative Islamic practices in public schools,” commented Turkey scholar Soner Cagaptay in a forward to the study.
The study was released as Turkey was attempting to repair relations with Europe and Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel, that were bruised by Ankara’s aggressive assertiveness in Libya, Syria, the Caucasus, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Erdogan spoke in a video conference to European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in advance of a European summit that was scheduled to discuss relations with Turkey.
The conference came a day after the EU shelved plans to blacklist senior executives of Turkey’s state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) in retaliation for Turkish drilling for natural gas in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean.
The report is likely to add to skepticism about an 11-point human rights action plan recently unveiled by Erdogan that he said would bolster freedoms and legal protections.
Erdogan has undermined freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary, and arrested thousands on often flimsy charges since he defeated a failed military coup in 2016. As a result, Turkey ranks today as one of the world’s foremost jailers of journalists.
Turkish police recently detained several officials of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), days after a top public prosecutor demanded the party’s dissolution for alleged links to Kurdish nationalist militants. Parliament also expelled an HDP deputy, undermining Erdogan’s effort to suggest that he is adhering to values projected by Europe and US President Joe Biden….
