Country report: Turkey

National, international and supranational perspectives on religious education, law and the judiciary: past, present and future

“…These articles were selected to illustrate both national and international legislation, including international court cases. We note the constitutional or legal provision sections in the "country reports" (e.g., Bin Jamil, 2022;Hendek, 2019), as further evidence of the value of this topic, though do not follow these further. The topics covered include new legislation around religious education, particularly syllabuses, syllabus-making, content and the opt-out clause.…”

Argumentation and interdisciplinarity: reflections from the Oxford Argumentation in Religion and Science Project

“…This is partly because any discussion of the educational nexus of science and religion raises some contextual issues about the place of religions in schools-for example, the famous Scopes trial in the U.S. on the teaching of evolution (Larson, 1997)-and indeed more widely about the constitutional relationship between the state and religions (e.g., Davis & Miroshnikova, 2013;Jackson, Miedema, Weisse, & Willaime, 2007;Sullivan & Beaman, 2013). Countries may have an official state religion that permeates its educational system, such as in England (Gates & Jackson, 2014), Indonesia or Israel (Künkler & Lerner, 2016), they may be explicitly hostile to religion, as was the case in the former Soviet Union, or indeed they may be between these positions, with different models of state religiosity, secularity or impartiality, such as France (Willaime, 2014), USA (Russo, 2012) or Turkey (Hendek, 2019). Indeed these positions may change, for example in response to increasing secularisation and religious diversity, which may necessitate more and more impartial teaching (Beyer, 2013); international terrorism, which may encourage a subject aimed at social cohesion and irenic forms of religiosity (Ghosh, Chan, Manuel, & Dilimulati, 2016;Jackson, 2014;OSCE/ ODIHR, 2007); the declining influence of political atheism, notably communism, with increasing recognition of religions e.g.…”