The AKP will enter homes along with Ensar

Ozan Çepni
 
The Ministry of National Education (MNE) has taken the first step towards implementing FETO’s much-criticised home chats. From beneath the “home religious chats” project launched in Istanbul’s Maltepe, a partnership has emerged between the AKP, Religious Affairs Directorate, religious orders and pro-regime trade unions. Under an instruction for the commencement of chats outside school hours aimed at raising children as “generations endowed with national and moral values”, the AKP, Ensar Foundation and Society for the Dissemination of Knowledge will enter homes under the auspices of the MNE bringing with them anti-republican content branded as being “religious chat”.
 
In the AKP period in which education is undergoing religification at every stage, the MNE has lent its signature to yet another scandal. The MNE, not satisfied with compulsory religious education and elective religious courses in schools and incapable of learning the lesson of the 15 July coup attempt, has decided to continue with religious education at home with the “chat” implementation that FETO used as a method to brainwash children. Under the instruction of Istanbul Maltepe Sub-Province Director of National Education Faik Kaptan, a home religious chat initiative has been started with content that portrays the initial period of the Republic in a hostile manner to children, named the “Teacher Chats Project”. The use of material from a foundation named the “Civilisation Travelers Foundation” instead of MNE-approved textbooks has been decided on to cover the topics to be addressed in the home religious chats. It has emerged that lying behind the foundation administered by AKP Sancaktepe Mayor İsmail Erdem is a partnership between the AKP, Religious Affairs Directorate, MNE, Ensar Foundation which attained notoriety for its child abuse scandal, Society for the Dissemination of Knowledge, pro-regime Eğitim-Bir-Sen trade union and Leader Religious Vocational High School Graduates Association.
 
Pious generation the goal
 
In the letter that the Directorate of National Education sent to schools, the aim of the home religious chats is stated to be “to contribute towards the raising of generations endowed with national and moral values outside school hours.” The instruction was given for religious education work to be performed with Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge teachers whose salaries are paid by the MNE by teachers with ten-person student groups, “if possible at home” in a family visit and chat manner and, if possible, in a dedicated space. It is noticeable that the weekly topic materials that the Directorate of National Education has loaded onto its website originate from the Civilisation Travelers Foundation. It has been planned for religious education to be given over 28 units, with unit names such as faith, worship, 15 July and canonical laws.
 
70,000 pupils targeted
 
With it emerging that the home religious chat project has been implemented by the Civilisation Travelers Foundation over the past three years, there is a marked effort to see this initiative spread to all schools using state resources and backing. It is noteworthy that the “chat” system as described under the heading “education system” on the foundation’s website is identical word for word with the Directorate of National Education’s official letter. With the foundation announcing that it has reached 424 educators and 4,275 pupils in three years, the 70,000 pupils receiving education in Maltepe sub-province have become the latest target for the foundation’s teaching with the MNE’s support.
 
“Local, national and conscious” youth
 
The new educational model that the MNE will roll out is explained on the foundation’s site as, “Setting out from basic catechistic knowledge, our Master the Prophet’s Life, the Period of the Four Caliphs, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Andalusian Umayyads and the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, religion and state relations in the Republic periods and the legendary struggle that His Excellency our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has waged along with the founding of the AK Party for our people, the Islamic World and all our territory that is dear to our heart constitute this road map for ‘National and Conscious Youth’.”
 
Same goal as FETO: Belonging
 
There is a notable similarity between the Civilisation Travelers Foundation’s model that it proclaims on its site to be supported by the AKP, Religious Affairs Directorate, MNE, Ensar Foundation, Society for the Dissemination of Knowledge, Eğitim-Bir-Sen and Leader Religious Vocational High School Graduates Association, and the method used by FETO, which staged the 15 July coup attempt. The foundation underlying the ministry’s project states that they conduct “an education that touches souls and thanks to this arouses a warmer and more lasting sense of belonging” by reaching out to children at places like homes, youth centres, culture centres, course centres and knowledge houses.
 
The MNE will give instruction in anti-Republicanism
 
There is egregiously scandalous content in the material for the project that will pave the way for the AKP and religious orders to gain entry to homes under the auspices of the MNE and for children to be placed under their education model outside school. Opposition to the Republican period is clearly present in the text entitled “Watching the Rupture from Essence on the Swing of Torment” numbering among the topics in which the MNE is to instruct children under the heading of “General Culture”. In the text, following the pronouncement, “The Ottoman State, which maintained its sovereignty for more than six centuries, was no more. Our people placed all their hope in the newly established state. The first implementations, rather than meeting our people’s expectations, were of a troubling nature,” there is criticism of the abolition of the caliphate, the abolition of the Ministry of Islamic Law and Foundations and the closure of the theological schools under the Law on Unification of Education along with the comment of Minister of National Education of the day, Hasan Ali Yücel, on the Law on Unification of Education, “This law abolished the theological school that was entirely a religious education institution, and Turkish education assumed a secular and worldly character... The unification of education is a movement to destroy the way of thinking that was connected to the past and establish a modern culture. In this sense, this is one of the most important revolutions of our history and future.” The text, in which the founding years of the Republic are criticised without using Atatürk’s name, contains the pronouncement, “The period known as the Single Party Period between the years of 1923-1946 has considerable importance as far as our recent history is concerned. In this period, in which, under the ‘For the people despite the people’ approach, the people’s demands and expectations were not taken into account and ideological approaches predominated, serious material and spiritual crises were experienced in the country. Just as the people were not taken into account, as there was also no political opposition, the single-party political rulership set about implementing everything it wished with an authoritarian attitude. As will be realised from their being ingrained in memories as “The years in which it was forbidden to speak of God” and the information that has in part been provided above, considerable difficulties were experienced in religious life.”