Children are the target of the new regime

Kayhan Ayhan

The government, which has targeted the nurseries opened by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, wants to build a new regime through its own nurseries. Stepping up its reactionary policies in education, the government is seeking to complete the reactionary transformation the regime needs through the Ministry of National Education. In this context, many practices have been implemented through protocols signed with reactionary pro-government civil society organisations, from changing lesson content to opening prayer rooms in pre-school institutions, from putting co-education on the chopping block to appointing imams to schools. Under Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin, these practices have accelerated. After the Ministry of National Education, governorships have also been brought in for this transformation.

BUILDING A NEW REGIME

Istanbul Governor Davut Gül announced that new nurseries and nursery schools will be opened in İstanbul. Stating that 100 nurseries would be built and allocated to the Ministry of Family and Social Services, Gül also said that 100 Qur’an courses for ages 4-6 would be opened together with the office of the mufti. Speaking to A Haber, Gül argued that these courses were “the mufti’s nursery schools” and claimed that their content was similar to the education in nursery schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education.

Educator Feray Aytekin Aydoğan stressed that the basic principle of education, a public service, must be equal, free, secular, scientific and high-quality, saying: “While pre-school is paid in public pre-schools and not a single step is taken to make pre-school free and compulsory, the steps taken to expand Qur’an courses for ages 4-6 have continued without interruption from the 2021 Council decisions to today. The construction of a new regime through education is being implemented step by step. While there are tens of thousands of pre-school teachers who have not been appointed, people who do not have the qualifications of an educator are being employed in Qur’an courses for ages 4-6 through certificate programmes. At a time when children are not at an age to learn abstract information, the expansion of these courses also leads to a violation of children’s right to education. The issue is not children’s right to pre-school education, but the restructuring of all public spheres, starting with education, in line with the ideological needs of the political power.”

HARMFUL TO CHILDREN

Psychiatrist Prof. Dr Selçuk Candansayar stressed that religious education for children aged 4-6 would bring more harm than benefit, saying: “In people, the ability for abstract thinking continues to develop until the age of 15, but they mainly think concretely. Children aged 4-5 cannot understand abstract concepts such as heaven, hell, sin, burning in the fires of hell and may develop a fear that a real, concrete fire could burn them. There have been examples of a five-year-old child who had been told about the concept of heaven at nursery telling their mother, ‘Mum, I want to die, they say children go to heaven when they die and heaven is very beautiful,’ and saying they wanted to die. For this reason, from the perspective of a child’s mental development, religious education under the age of 15 can do more harm than good. In a country whose constitution includes secularism, it is enough to teach children under the age of 15 basic moral concepts and tying moral concepts to religion can confuse children greatly. Under the age of 15, religion and God are perceived as frightening and punitive and the child cannot internalise religion’s features of love, tolerance, equality and solidarity. Instilling a punitive understanding of religion and God is an injustice both to religious belief and to children.”

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Çocuklar yeni rejimin hedefi, published in BirGün newspaper on February 12, 2026.