Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long promoted the goal of raising a “pious youth.” The new curriculum in Turkish schools marks another step in this direction. When the Ministry of Education presented the drafts for the framework and individual curricula in April, it allowed teachers, parents, and educational researchers only two weeks to respond. “No one knows who developed the curriculum. No one knows why it was developed. There isn’t even a needs analysis,” said many teachers. They described it as the “least participative, least child-centered, and most politicized” educational reform since Erdoğan came to power. The greatest concern is that the government is pursuing a political agenda instead of addressing the country’s most pressing educational issues. The concept appears to have been developed without any understanding of modern pedagogy.
Although Türkiye’s results in the PISA studies have slightly improved over the past ten years, and much investment has gone into infrastructure, the country still ranked significantly below the average of the 38 OECD countries in the most recent performance comparison. In mathematics, for example, 39 percent of Turkish students fell into the lowest performance segment, and only five percent reached the highest. The OECD average was 31 and 9 percent, respectively.
The latest PISA study has shown vast differences in knowledge transfer between different types of schools. Students in religiously-oriented institutions are sometimes several years behind peers of the same age in other schools. While there is a great need for reforms in Turkish education policy, a needs analysis, consultation with experts, and involvement of the teaching staff are necessary for this. None of that has happened. “This reform is pure ideology. I don’t understand how the government plans to build a knowledge-based society by weakening school education,” said an educator in Istanbul.
The new curriculum will be introduced gradually, with other grade levels following later. Officially, the reform was partly justified by the need to simplify certain subjects, like the traditionally high demands in mathematics that often leave many students behind. However, government critics suspect that much more is at stake. The new curriculum focuses on holistic, values-based education, with a strong emphasis on Turkish-Islamic history, culture, and tradition across all subjects, as well as a recurring emphasis on independence from the West.
There is also concern within the EU, which has provided Türkiye’s Ministry of Education with over 25 million euros for a project to improve early childhood education starting in 2021. Since the new curriculum also applies to preschool, the two projects overlap and conflict. The political intent of the reform is evident in its name: “Education Model for Türkiye’s Century.” With the slogan “Türkiye’s Century,” Erdoğan continues to reshape the state. The president recently announced that the judiciary system would also align with this vision, casting himself as the architect of a new Türkiye.
The Ministry is now planning a new wave of inspections. “They will monitor children’s notebooks and teachers’ planning documents.” This recalls an earlier era in Türkiye, before the education sector was slightly democratized in 2003. Education has long been a highly political matter, dating back to the founding of the Republic. Atatürk saw it as a tool to modernize the country quickly and secularize society. Headscarves were prohibited in most schools until 2014. This laid the groundwork for the polarization of Turkish society, which persists to this day. Erdoğan is transforming the education sector in the opposite direction.
In 2012, Erdoğan overturned a military-enforced rule from 1997 that allowed preacher training schools, known as Imam Hatip schools, to be attended only from the ninth grade onward. Since then, this school branch has been massively expanded. Erdoğan himself attended a preacher school in his youth. Around three percent of Turkish students now attend religious schools. A major curriculum reform followed in 2017. Secular Turks felt that the curriculum introduced at that time was no longer compatible with the values of Atatürk, the founder of the Republic. In history and social studies textbooks, his importance was emphasized less than before, while there was a stronger focus on “Turkish-Islamic civilization.” The theory of evolution was removed from biology classes. Religious education was expanded and made so dogmatic that minorities, such as the Alevis, felt hardly represented.
Many parents from the secular middle class subsequently sent their children to private schools, which now make up a fifth of all schools. However, given the current economic difficulties, fewer families can afford this. Dissatisfaction with the quality of teaching extends far beyond opposition voters. In a survey conducted by the Konda polling institute, 68 percent of respondents were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. In surveys on willingness to emigrate, the education system is often cited as one of the main reasons.
The new curriculum continues on a path of Islamization. The goal of “understanding secularism” has been removed, as has the goal of understanding the importance of human rights. Erdoğan dismissed the criticism from the opposition and opposition-aligned teachers’ unions, saying, “We will not allow anyone to stand between the children of this country and religious values.”
The Turkish government likes to showcase high-tech “made in Türkiye” and has invested in future technologies. The defense sector, particularly drone technology, has seen visible success, and the government-supported electric car, Togg, is now in mass production. There is even a Turkish space program that started a few years ago. However, an ideologically driven education policy is not conducive to such ambitions. Another perspective on this is that Erdoğan is often seen as a highly pragmatic or opportunistic politician who prioritizes maintaining power and has made numerous shifts in direction to achieve it. One example is his monetary policy, where Erdoğan long called high-interest rates the “mother of all evils,” but since the elections in May 2023, the central bank has raised the key interest rate from 8.5 to 50 percent. His foreign policy also offers examples of this pragmatism, as when Ankara has reached out to countries like Egypt or Greece, whose leaders were considered arch-enemies only a few years ago.
Despite these shifts, Erdoğan pursues long-term goals with strategic foresight. These include establishing Türkiye as an independent power center in a multipolar world and transforming Atatürk’s secular republic into a state rooted in Islamic tradition and confidently distanced from the West. Education policy is also intended to contribute to this.
