You may think that the hottest agenda item in Turkey these days is Cyprus and the Turkey`s EU membership process. But actually, the fate of the Imam and Preacher Schools (IPS) is what has escalated the subterranean tension between the conservative AKP government and the secular establishment to a very uncomfortable level of open confrontation. It seems like, on this issue, the two sides have reached a dangerous point of no return.
The issue revolves around a new and highly controversial “education reform bill” that the ruling AKP wants to pass through the Parliament.
The bill severely curtails the powers and autonomy of the current YOK (Higher Education Council) and provides new advantages to IPS graduates in Turkish college entrance exams.
The uproar from the university administration, mass media and the Turkish Armed Forces was immediate and firm.
While the AKP government insists that as the elected representatives of the people they can pass whatever laws they want from the Parliament, the equally determined opposition reminds that political legitimacy in a democracy rests not only on a numerical majority in the Parliament but also on the establishment of necessary balances and compromises with the “other groups and players."
The secular civilian and military establishment remind that a similar confrontation brewed up by the Democrat Party government during the 1957-60 period ended up galvanizing the media, universities and the Army, and led to the 1960 coup. Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, as well as his Foreign Minister Fatin Rüstü Zorlu and Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan were executed by hanging in 1961 following the famous “Yassiada Trials.”
The AKP government would like to help the graduates of the IPS schools (considered a special kind of “vocational schools”) compete with the graduates of other “normal high schools” by weighing their test scores with a coefficient. Since the PM Erdogan himself is an IPS graduate it is not difficult to understand the sentiment and energy behind this bill.
However, the built-in contradictions of the IPS make it a bit difficult to understand why the IPS graduates need to compete with the other “normal high schools” for the scarce and highly prized slots in Turkish universities (out of the 2 million students who take the standardized university entrance exam, only about 200,000 are accepted every year).
First of all, in many countries of the world, students who agree to go to “vocational schools” understand and accept that they are choosing an educational track designed to give them a practical (and usually, blue-collar) trade (like car repair, or print ship foreman, etc.) instead of an education heavy on the theoretical/academic side. Just like the “normal high school” graduates know and accept that by the time they graduate they are good only as university candidates and nothing much else, the “vocational high school” graduates the world over (including the United States) also know and accept that their strength is their readiness to immediately join the labor force and start generating income without arduous years and high expense of an university education. So the AKP critics argue that, trying to help the IPS graduates enter normal universities is like changing horses in mid-stream and is both unfair and unnecessary.
Secondly, the way IPS are set up suggests a political agenda at work. IPS were founded to train the imams required by the 90,000 mosques in Turkey.
However, there are two problems with that: a) There are no female imams in Turkey, yet the IPS continues to admit and graduate female students. b) The annual new imam need of Turkey is probably between 5,000-10,000. So why do about 75,000 kids attend the IPS? (This number was close to 250,000 about a decade ago.)
Thus neither the number nor the composition of the IPS suggests that these schools are set up mainly to serve their original purpose.
The AKP critics like to remind Necmettin Erbakan`s bragging that “the imam-hatip schools are the backyard of our Party.” There is still fear and concern that the AKP government will use the IPS to recruit the religious-minded ultra-conservative bureaucrats and state administrators of tomorrow.
But on the other hand there is a good reason, other than political expediency, why these schools survived and prospered – the Turkish masses wanted their sons and daughters to receive the kind of religious education that they believed the “normal” high schools were not providing.
So what is a possible solution to the current impasse?
Here is my solution:
1) Limit the number of IPS enrollment to Turkey`s annual average need for new imams (10,000?).
2) Limit the college choice of the IPS graduates to the Faculty of Divinity which is perfectly suited to those IPS graduates who would like to broaden their theological background and perhaps even get a Masters and Ph.D. in Divinity. Those students who do not want to continue with a religious career should either not be admitted into the IPS in the first place, or should be denied another college path for unilaterally violating their IPS contracts.
3) Add elective courses on religion (both on Islam and on other religions) to the curriculum of the “normal” high schools so that those students who would like to learn more about their religion would be able to do so without attending a “vocational high school” like the IPS.
This solution would 1) provide the Turkish youth with the religious education that they or their parents want, 2) make sure that Turkish mosques would be administered and led by well-educated and qualified imams, while 3) prevent the politically-motivated possible staffing of the state bureaucracies with IPS graduates.