The Turkish government is challenging the secular establishment over educational reform, reports Gareth Jenkins from Istanbul Turkey's moderate Islamist government last week faced the most serious political crisis of its 18 months in power after proposed educational reforms brought it head to head with Turkey's secular establishment, led by the military. The government issued a direct challenge to the secular establishment by pushing through parliamentary legislative reforms that would place graduates of religious training schools on an equal footing with graduates of standard high schools. The reforms have triggered a furious reaction from the Turkish secular establishment. Thousands of university rectors have staged protest marches, while the staunchly secular Turkish military, which in recent months has been careful not to be seen interfering in politics largely for fear of jeopardising Turkey's hopes of EU membership, has bluntly condemned the reforms. In a statement posted on its Web site, the Turkish general staff declared that the reforms would violate the "principles of secular education" which are enshrined in the Turkish constitution, announcing it expected the Turkish nation to respond accordingly. Since taking office in an electoral landslide in November 2002, the governing Justice and Development Party (JDP) has tried to avoid controversy, backing down whenever it has been challenged by the secular establishment and concentrating on trying to strengthen Turkey's still fragile economy. Privately, sources close to the JDP leadership have long argued that the party must bide its time, build up its electoral base and place enough party supporters in the government bureaucracy before attempting a direct challenge to the secular establishment. The government has also undoubtedly been remarkably lucky, not only inheriting an economy which had just begun to emerge from the deepest recession in modern Turkish history but also surviving the debacle of its failed attempt in March 2003 to persuade parliament to allow US troops to transit Turkey in the run-up to the war against Iraq. However, the JDP appears to have fallen victim to its own success. In local elections on 28 March 2004 the JDP won 42 per cent of the popular vote, up from 34 per cent in November 2002. But the rise in electoral support increased the pressure on the JDP government from its grassroots to deliver on its electoral promises. The religious training high schools, known in Turkish as Imam Hatip Liseleri (IHLs), were originally established in 1951 to train Muslim clergy. But over the next 50 years they rapidly outgrew their original purpose as successive governments sought to win the support of devout voters by building new IHLs and opening them to female students. By 1999 there were 612 IHLs in Turkey with nearly 400,000 students. Under pressure from the Turkish military, the middle school sections of the IHLs were then closed and the rules for university entrance examinations amended to make it very difficult for IHL graduates to continue their education except at a handful of theology faculties. But even today there are still 452 IHLs in Turkey with 85,000 students, of whom approximately 25,000 graduate each year. Even allowing for a large number of girls who cannot serve as clergy this is still far in excess of the annual demand for imams at Turkey's 75,000 mosques. Last Thursday morning, after an 18-hour all- night debate, the government pushed through a package of educational reforms which would have enabled IHL graduates to compete for university places on equal terms with graduates of other high schools. To the Turkish secular establishment the reforms were anathema, the first step in a campaign to establish a parallel educational system, effectively resurrecting the Islamic madrasas of the Ottoman Empire. Such claims were angrily rejected by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, himself an IHL graduate, who argued, not without justification, that the reforms had been included in the JDP's electoral programme and had long been discussed in meetings between government officials and university rectors. In the short-term, bureaucratic procedures and the government's own incompetence is likely to prevent the reforms being enacted in time for the new academic year that will start in September. The reform package will almost certainly be vetoed by Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a committed secularist, and returned to parliament. But the Turkish president can only veto a law once. If parliament passes the reforms again unchanged then Sezer's only option will be to forward the law to the Constitutional Court. In its haste to push through the reforms ready for the next academic year, the government included a reference to a member of the military sitting on the Supreme Educational Board (YOK), which oversees university education, even though the constitution had just been amended to remove members of the military from the YOK. As a result, the educational reforms are incompatible with the current constitution. Nor is there much chance of the government being able to re-draft and enact a new law before parliament goes into its summer recess. The reforms are likely to mark a turning point for the JDP government. Many moderate secularists had been prepared to give the JDP the benefit of the doubt when it claimed that it was merely a conservative rather than an Islamist party. But the contrast between the government's determination to push through the reform bill and its prevarications on other issues, such as strengthening the legal rights of women, has seriously damaged its credibility. For hard-line secularists, like the Turkish military, the educational reforms merely confirm what they had long suspected. Even if Turkey's Constitutional Court annul the reforms, the battle lines between the government and the secular establishment are now firmly drawn.
