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This article analyses the impact of neo-conservative Islam as an ideology on secular education across different periods of Turkish history, but particularly the past two decades. First, the role of religion in Turkish society is discussed, then, the effects of religion on the educational system during the past 70 years is examined, with examples given of how secular education has been eroded over time. Neo-conservatism emerged after 1990 and has since been infused into Turkey's educational system, with successive conservative governments having changed the structure and curricula at every level. This newly emerged Islamic tendency, called "neo-conservative Islamic Ideology," has become a discourse in education. As a result, it has influenced the very structure of school curricula, as well as the national educational policy and its implementation throughout Turkish society, causing much heated and widespread debate. Neoconservative policies have caused the emergence of a dual education system in Turkey, with one Islamic-oriented and the other secular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The transition from the medieval universities to the secular, second generation universities in Turkey occurred in the period from 1773 to 1945. The Ottoman Empire''s efforts to establish a higher education system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries only aimed at modernization of the armed forces, and the civil effects on the general society were only secondary. After the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923, complete modernization of all institutions of society, including political, social, educational, economic, and law reforms, were initiated by the President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. His establishment of the modern Istanbul University in Turkey was an experiment unforeseen in the history of education. Step by step, he created a new language, a new alphabet, achieved unified and secular education under government supervision, formed primary and secondary education to support higher education, took expert opinion on forming the new university, and finally established the modern university. German-speaking academicians have played a very important role during the creation of the modern secular university in Turkey. This is a short analysis of this period. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the summer of 1924, American philosopher and education theorist John Dewey travelled to Turkey to advise the Turkish government on the development of a new, secular education system. Dewey later wrote five articles for the New Republic on political and educational affairs in Turkey; one of them, “The Turkish Tragedy,” alluded to the deportations and massacres of the Armenians in 1915–1916 and insinuated that alleged Armenian treachery and atrocities had provoked them. This article explains how and why this influential intellectual compromised his own high epistemic standards and morally mitigated Turkish responsibility for the Armenian Genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On the basis of an ethnographic analysis of an Imam-Hatip vocational religious secondary school in Turkey, I examine teachers' and parents' expectations and the process of students' identity formation. Although the students attending the Imam-Hatip school were expected to accept a reality infused with an Islamic worldview, their schooling experience actually strengthened the relational nature of identity formation in the context of Islamism and secularism, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]