Turkey’s conservatives tighten grip on schools as imams appointed ‘spiritual counselors’

IZMIR, Turkey — A pilot project appointing imams and preachers as “spiritual counselors” to elementary and secondary schools has stirred up a hornet’s nest in the Aegean port city of Izmir, a bastion of Turkey’s pro-secular opposition. 

The project known as CEDES, an acronym for “I protect my environment and claim my values,” has fanned fears that Turkey’s powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) — emboldened by the electoral victory of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) in partnership with two radical Islamist partners — would step up efforts to boost its role in the education system.   

Nejla Kurul, president of the teachers’ union Egitim-Sen, expressed her concerns in an interview with CanTV, an independent news outlet. “This is not an innocent project that aims to create awareness about the environment and seeks to provide value-based guidance on everyday issues. It is yet another effort to force the Sunni Islamic lifestyle on children and undermine the secular education system that should be under constitutional protection. Diyanet is forcing its way into education, the domain of Turkey’s Education Ministry, step-by-step,” she said.

The public reaction to the project came after media reports that Izmir's Religious Affairs Office had notified more than 800 elementary and secondary schools — one-third of all the schools within the city borders — that they were assigning imams and preachers for spiritual guidance for students. For the last two weeks, several parents’ associations, left-wing community centers (halkevleri) and opposition parties led by Republican People’s Party (CHP) have staged demonstrations under the banner, “Teachers to schools, Imams to mosques,” in the multifaith city, which predominantly voted for the CHP in the last election.  

Izmir has a small number of Jewish, Orthodox and Catholic communities and is home to roughly 800,000 Alevis, heterodox Muslims who make up as much as 20% of the 80 million-plus population of Turkey.  

One of the protests in Izmir was attacked by a group that said they were from the influential Menzil sect from eastern Turkey.  

Egitim-Sen filed last week for the annulment of the project on the grounds that the appointment of Sunni clergy to schools as counselors undermines the constitutional principle of secularism in education and creates discrimination between students who belong to different faiths.

Signed between the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Youth and Sports and Directorate of Religious Affairs in 2021, the protocol’s appointment of spiritual counselors is the tip of the iceberg. The 10-page protocol between the three state bodies establishes a “Values Club” at schools across Turkey and nominates four students — two boys and two girls — to lead a yearlong “values program” that includes “secular activities” such as spring festivals, sports contests and visits to the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) and disaster management agency AFAD.

However, the program also has a pronounced pious edge such as the study of the Prophet Muhammed’s life, Quran courses in local centers that belong to the Directorate of Religious Affairs, visits to mosques, fast-breaking events and monthly or weekly lectures on social and religious values by the spiritual counselors — a glorified term for the graduates of Imam Hatip religious schools  who have been employed by the state since 2015 to provide moral support and guidance in hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, prisons, youth and community shelters and more recently in the earthquake-hit regions.  

While the role of spiritual counselors essentially went unchallenged in hospitals and nursing homes, their work toward the youth has been controversial, particularly in orphanages and state-run dorms.  After a public outrage following the suicide of three students at the dorms of a public university last year, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, which has the jurisdiction over state-run dorms, suspended the spiritual counselors but reinstated the system after seven months, despite protests from opposition parties.  

Kurul explained that two decades of AKP rule has created a large pool of clergy through its program of expanding public Imam Hatip schools, which offers extensive religious courses. “Now they are creating new cadres for the imams in the bureaucracy, particularly in the education sector … which they consider key in forming young minds,” she told CanTV. 

But many believe it is more than just a question of jobs for the graduates of Imam Hatip schools, whose influential alumni include Erdogan. The preschool Quran courses, the launch of a children’s channel by Diyanet last May and the ever-increasing presence of spiritual counselors all tie into a larger picture: Erdogan’s oft-repeated goal of creating a pious generation that espouses Islamic values and will work for “the construction of a new civilization.”  

“We have to show our reaction now as the architects of this project will use the summer to create the infrastructure and launch activities outside the school to influence young minds,” Kurul said. 

“How many imams, preachers and Imam Hatip graduates have been assigned to schools around Turkey?” asked Izmir CHP deputy Deniz Yucel in a question motion to the new Education Minister Yusuf Tekin. “Will you annul this project that undermines the secular education system and increases polarization in the country?” 

Yucel, a jurist on his first term in parliament and a member of the Justice Commission, told Al-Monitor that he has yet to receive a reply to his question despite the parliamentary rule to reply within 15 days. “But I will not let that go — neither politically nor judicially — and will get this project annulled in court,” he said. “We in Izmir believe in the secular education system where teachers — not imams — provide education and values to the students. There is no demand from the constituency. Insisting on this in a city known for its secular lifestyle is a provocation.” 

On the other hand, the protocol's advocates think the reaction is a storm in a teacup, particularly given that the activities are voluntary and subject to parental approval. “Due to the vocal and politically motivated reaction from Izmir and the media, people make a judgment without even bothering to read the protocol. We have already successfully implemented the program in many schools across Turkey,” said a bureaucrat from the Education Ministry who asked not to be identified, inviting Al-Monitor to check the website for examples of how CEDES worked.

“In several schools, the values program helped victims of the devastating earthquake earlier this year,” the source said. Published photos showed aid packages being prepared for earthquake victims and several photos showed “spiritual guidance lessons,” including one where a veiled spiritual counselor lectures a group of teenage girls wearing dark veils in a school in the eastern province of Batman. 

Izmir's Religious Affairs Office said that the spiritual counselors assigned to schools were not intended as replacements for teachers. Instead, they would hold lectures at the “Values Clubs” to address religious and spiritual questions from students or hold one-to-one talks with them. “These are people who have had religious and pedagogical training,” their statement said. 

“If my child has a moral dilemma, she can go to the school counselor and if she has a question on religion, she can ask her religion teacher,” said Sema Yildirim, whose 15-year-old daughter goes to a public school. “I don't see the point of this appointment. It is a waste of the state’s resources and my taxes.”