Turkey's ÖDP warns against AKP's effort to enact sharia in education system
Education committee of Turkey’s ÖDP (Freedom and Solidarity Party) has released a statement warning about the efforts of the ruling party AKP in institutionalizing sharia rules especially in the country’s education field.
As it was recently announced by a head official from Turkey’s Ministry of National Education that the Evolution Theory of Darwin will be excluded from biology textbooks at high schools starting next year, democracy forces and a group of opposition members, as well as people preferring a secular and scientific education system, reacted against the decision on social media and in other platforms.
The proposed changes on the curriculum have already been approved by the president Erdoğan and expected to be officially released during the week after Eid.
On Saturday (June 24), on the other hand, changes on regulations on educational institutions were published on Official Gazette (Resmi Gazete). According to the newly adapted changes, a mascid – Islamic prayer room – and an Islamic washroom will be obligatory to include in all new buildings of educational institutions.
Expressing objection to the new regulations and the new curriculum, Turkey’s Freedom and Solidarity (ÖDP) Party released a statement warning against the ‘obvious attempt of the ruling party to impose a sectarian culture on educational institutions’ in the country and called on people who value democracy and freedoms to ‘not surrender in the face of this oppression’.
One of the other significant changes enacted by the new regulations is that opening and/or functioning of a school under the Ministry will be based on a ‘population requisite’ of a particular town. Drawing attention to the possible drawbacks that this kind of a policy will bring about, ÖDP members pressed in their statement that it will cause children of small towns and villages to have even more difficulty in having access to education.
Criticizing the exclusion of evolution theory from the curriculum and inclusion of more mandatory lesson hours on Religion Education instead, the statement of ÖDP also had a warning about an addition of a chapter in the religion courses where students will be taught about ‘sharia rules on marriage, punishments, and so on’.