Erdogans Post-Evolutionary Turkey Floods School Classrooms, Threatens Universities

While the earlier education reforms of Turkey's socially
conservative AKP (Justice and Development Party)
pointed towards inclusiveness, the current ones have a
far more troubling direction.
Not content with removing around 45,000 education
ministry staff from the government payroll following an
abortive coup in July last year, Turkey's ruling party is
now looking to take down Darwin.
Last month the government announced that the theory
of evolution would be removed from the teaching
curriculum at Turkish schools until students reach
university.
The announcement adds to evidence cited by
concerned secularists who suggest Turkey's education
system is being remodelled in line with President
Erdogan's bid to raise “pious generations” and forge a
“New Turkey”.
Efforts to rejig the country's teaching curriculum along
more religious lines are not new, dating back at least
as February 2012 .
What has changed since is President Erdogan's
seemingly unassailable position in post-coup attempt
and post-referendum Turkey.
‘New Turkey’
Despite its shrunken majority and the ever-increasing
polarization of the Turkish electorate — or perhaps
because of these things — AKP is pushing its policy
agenda more aggressively than ever before.
Along with the ban on evolution in the classroom, the
AKP educational reforms will see the government's
narrative on the 2016 coup attempt embedded in
school syllabi, while class time dedicated to modern
Turkey's secular founder Kemal Attaturk will be
reduced.
Forced enrolment of some school-age students
into controversial religious imam-hatip state schools is
another feature of the new education agenda.
The AKP government won praise from both liberals
and conservatives for managing to reverse the
country's repressive ban on headscarfs in universities
back in 2010. The move allowed women from
observant Muslim families to receive
further education.
But the imam-hatip schools have faced criticism for
discouraging girls from doing that very
thing. Secularists see the schools growing role in
Turkey's education system as yet another sign
that AKP is trying to recast the country in its own
traditionalist image.
An evolving threat
According to the head of curriculum for the Turkish
education ministry, teaching evolution in schools is
“controversial”, but opponents of the ban were quick
to side with science.
Evrim müfredattan çıkarıldı, biyoloji ders
saati %33 azaltılırken din dersi saati % 100
arttırıldı. İran'ı kısa zamanda geçeriz
İnşaAllah!
— yavuz özmen (@yavuz_ozmen) June 28,
2017
Evrim teorisi dersi kalkıyormuş arkadaşlar,
arttık neyin dersini verecekler çocuklarımıza
onu merak ediyorum
— Ugras Coskun Bagcı (@UgrasBagc) June
28, 2017
Okullarda evrim dersleri okutulmayacak ama
şeriat ceza hukuku din dersi okutulacak #
işte yeni Türkiye anlayışı
— ATATÜRKÇÜ BİRİSİ
(@MehmetEkremVar2) June 25, 2017
Biyoloji dersi ilk ders ilk slayt; evrim bir
gerçektir, tartışılamaz. 29 yıldır aklımda.
Hoca haklıydı.
— bülent baştürk (@bulent_basturk) April 10,
2017
The international response has also been critical:
#Erdogan continues to change #Turkey ‘s
identity by erasing evolution from the
country's education curriculum. https://t.co/
tpxK0ekhjR
— HRF (@HRF) June 23, 2017
Currently the evolution ban only applies to schools, but
many fear that universities are being targeted for a
serious government-led overhaul, too. Thousands of
academics were dismissed from their jobs following
the military coup, while out of 180 universities
currently operation.

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