17 December 2012

Turkey to Make Islam Part of University Entry Exams

.... The head of the Turkish body which oversees placement tests and university admissions has announced that it will soon include religious questions in its placement tests.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has previously reconfigured the exam formula to benefit those who had attended Imam Hatip schools—Turkey’s equivalent of a madrassa—over those who had had a traditional, liberal arts education.

While religion is in the state curriculum, there has been recent controversy over forcing non-Sunnis (20 percent of Turkey’s Muslims are Alevis, not Sunnis) into religious classes which indoctrinated Sunnism. [COMMENTARY MAGAZINE] Read more