By Nazlan Ertan
Hats off to Yusuf Tekin, Turkey’s controversial education minister, for cramming all of Turkey’s thorny subjects into a single speech and creating a debate that drew in political party leaders, actresses, and laymen. It was a performance to steal the limelight from Trump, let alone Erdoğan himself.
The Erzurum-born minister, who launched a controversial new curriculum last year, traveled from Baku to Batman, where he presents his education strategy to a large audience. On Nov. 17, he attended COP29 in Baku, where he explained how environmental awareness was now part of the Turkish education system. His critics would say he referred to the controversial project called CEDES, an acronym for “I protect my environment and claim my values.” The project does have an environmental focus, but it also has a “religious values” component under which local imams and preachers are assigned to each school in the project to provide spiritual guidance for students.
However, Tekin’s most controversial remarks came at the AKP’s Batman Convention, where he criticized the treatment of believers by the state in history and criticized the pre-AKP Turkey’s take on secularism. “In the 1940s,” he recounted, “people locked up mosques, used them for barns, and even banned Quran education in the name of secularism.”
Yusuf said that his understanding of secularism was that the state guaranteed freedom of faith and worship for all its citizens, regardless of religion.
“What you understand from secularism is shackling Islam… attempting to persuade university students to take off their headscarves and, failing that, banning them from studying,” he said. “Then you blame me for eroding Turkey’s secularism principles through the changes of the education system,” he said, addressing Turkey’s secular opposition. “Clearly, your definition of secularism is problematic, not mine.”
The CHP, on the other hand, thinks that Tekin himself is the problem. CHP Chair Özgür Özel attacked him “as the worst among the worst” in the AKP.
“He forgets that if it had not been for Atatürk [and the War of Independence], there would be no calls to prayers from those mosques,” he said, explaining that Tekin’s words on using mosques as barns were a reference to the Turkish patriots who hid their guns and armaments in mosques under piles of hay during the War of Independence.
Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP dynamo, also attacked Tekin as “mediocracy itself.”
“What the people expect from the education minister is securing a good education and adequate schools - what he deals with is spreading falsehoods,” he said. “May God save Turkey from these people’s wickedness.”
The main opposition party - and the Atatürk Association, an NGO that acts as a watchdog for Atatürk’s memory - have filed complaints against Tekin for “abuse of office” and “public incitement.” The HKP, a small Marxist-Leninist party, also filed a complaint against Tekin for violating the Constitution, which defines Turkey as a secular state.
CHP deputy Suat Özçağdaş said, standing outside Ankara’s Sıhhiye courthouse, that it was “downright shocking” that the minister of education, as a state official, is twisting historical truths while undermining the very Republic he swore to uphold. “This is a minister who thinks he can redefine secularism on the fly while claiming to be the guardian of education.”
While addressing AKP members in Rize, Tekin shook off the criticisms: “The CHP either did not know the Republic’s history or sought to redefine it,” he said.
Meanwhile, the broader education landscape has seen transformations that could leave even the most astute observers scratching their heads. Critics have pointed out that the previous AKP education ministers had a penchant for passing policies that skim the surface of educational quality while diving deep into ideological narratives that serve more to unify like-minded voters than to educate.
But some say that the garrulous Tekin went too far this time. Ahmet Hakan, the pro-AKP Hürriyet’s editor-in-chief, noted that the minister had made a mistake in bringing up a controversial issue when there had been problems of unity between the AKP and its partner MHP, whose voter base was sensitive to secularism.
Some others rallied behind Tekin: “For 104 years, we have been waiting for a minister of education like Tekin who upholds religious values,” wrote Zekeriya Say, the columnist for Haber7.
