Education and religious minorities in Turkey: the story behind the introduction of compulsory religion courses

Abstract

The introduction of compulsory religion education¹ to the Turkish state education system via the 1982 constitution is generally attributed to the military junta. Although this is mostly correct as the final decision on the subject was taken by the junta, I argue that various civilian groups and academics also contributed to the process that led the way to the introduction of the course. Between 1980 and 1982, mainly by order of the junta, various commissions were formed to produce reports about the compatibility of the course with the existing secularism clause in the constitution. These reports assessed the necessity of the course, as well as the details of its proposed content. It is my contention that the influence of these commissions on both the structure and content of the course has not yet attracted the attention of scholars. Yet this period reveals significant information as to which issues regarding the proposed compulsory religion course were deemed important by these civilian groups and consequently which were not considered as important. Therefore, a critical examination of this period is useful for explicating the blind spots in its exhausted debates about secularism.