ANKARA, 17 October 2003 — Turkey’s government signaled a retreat yesterday from plans to reform religious schools after strong opposition from the powerful military which fears the shake-up will boost the influence of Islam in higher education.
“We have postponed discussions on the draft law (on religious schools),” said Tayyar Altikulac, head of Parliament’s education commission.
The AKP is keen to ease restrictions on students entering university from the so-called “Imam Hatip” high schools — state-funded vocational schools for future Muslim clerics. But the military and university rectors have said the plans clash with Turkey’s secular constitution.
Altikulac said discussions would not resume until the government had completed its revision of another controversial educational bill on the organization of universities, which rectors say puts too much power in the government’s hands.
The military and other sections of Turkey’s secular establishment distrust Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which traces its roots to two Islamist parties banned in the late 1990s.
Financial markets, ever sensitive to signs of tension between the two, are following the debate closely. The AKP, which has a big enough parliamentary majority to amend the constitution if it wishes, eschews the Islamist label and says it is a moderate pro-Western party.
Erdogan, himself a product of the Imam Hatip system, agreed to put the plans on hold after discussions this week with Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the military General Staff, Turkish newspapers said. But Erdogan has also responded angrily to some of the criticism of the Imam Hatip schools, saying he would “sue” those who claimed the institutions sowed “trouble”.
“I can never accept or forgive this insult,” Thursday’s newspapers quoted him as saying. The military, university rectors and also TUSIAD, Turkey’s leading business forum, have called for a reduction in the number of Imam Hatip schools, saying the country does not need to produce so many clerics.
“The debate is really over whether this government is trying to promote religious schools in order to increase the influence of people with a religious background in politics,” said Murat Yetkin of the liberal daily Radikal.
