In Turkey’s New Curriculum, Ataturk, Darwin and Jihad Get Face-Lifts
When they were first highlighted this summer, a leading teachers union called them an effort to stymie the raising of "generations who ask questions." Turkey’s education system, which has long provided a secular education to religious
and secular students alike, has come under scrutiny by the government following the attempted coup on July 15, 2016, culminating in the firing of more than 33,000 teachers and the closing of scores of schools.
In elementary school religion classes, teachers will promote the nonviolent meaning of the word jihad — "to struggle" — as "love of homeland." And, perhaps most significantly in a country
where the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who created the modern secular Turkish state in 1923, is plastered everywhere, references in schools to Ataturk are expected to be downgraded.
The curriculum is also notable for whom it includes among Turkey’s enemies, including the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, long branded a terrorist group by Turkey
and the United States; the Islamic State; and Fethullah Gulen, an influential United States-based cleric whose supporters run a global network of schools which provide a secular education.
