Islamist Educational Policies, Islam and Erdoganist Nation Building in Turkey

Abstract

The revolutionary Kemalist ideology had been internalized through different state apparatuses as tools for social engineering of ‘best citizen’ construction. Thus, one of the important tools to construct the intended ‘best citizen’ was through secularized education. Creating hegemony over all religious institutions, put the control over them, and establishes the ‘true Islam’ that is Turkified version of Islam or “Kemalist Islam.” Therefore, Kemalist elites prohibited all religious medreses, except some religious schools that became under the state control and were remained with only aim of raising and training imams and preachers. Ironically, thus state apparatuses that were established by Kemalists for social engineering have been instrumentalized by Islamists after 2011. One of the manipulating tools is education that has been used for nation-building both by Kemalists and Islamists as well. The methods and instruments used by Kemalists and Islamists for nation-building are same but they have managed them for different purposes and different outcomes. This paper aims at analyzing and manifesting how Islamists generally and AKP specifically have islamized educational system by different policies, increasing the number of religious courses and religious schools. The Islamization and “de-Ataturkification” of educational system can be seen through the intensification of religio-nationalism with neo-Ottomanistic and Islamists approaches in religious and secular schools as well.