The national education problem

The Gülen brotherhood had infiltrated all corners of the state machinery, with considerable connivance from the ruling party, too, and was virtually set to take over the country. Those who collaborated with the brotherhood out of various self-interested relations joined in with brotherhood members who had been gathered in their childhood years.
The Gülen brotherhood was unable to bring to fruition a forty-year operation that gained considerable speed in the AKP period. But, it also provided other religious orders or brotherhoods with a road map. It knew that religious structures that had sufficient time and dedication could well come to dominate all of Turkey’s institutions. It does not apply to them all, for sure. However, there are religious brotherhoods and orders that have no truck with democracy and deem it a divine duty to impose the values they believe in on the country. Who can say that they are not itching to succeed where Gülen was unable to do so?
In the aftermath of 15 July, there was plenty of talk of making merit the basis in the state. However, developments indicate that this was not achieved. The ruling party is propped up by religious orders and religious orders have come to steer politics to an extent that has never existed in the history of the Republic.
The Gülen brotherhood’s method for gathering people was education. The current ruling party has also embarked on a similar path, religifying education and turning it into a religious order.
What methodological difference is there between the Ministry of National Education’s home religious chat project and the brotherhood’s chats? The gradual conversion of schools one by one into religious vocational schools was not enough, and children are not even being left in peace at home.
It was covered in Cumhuriyet yesterday. A plan is afoot to hold religious chats in homes outside school hours with materials provided by a body of uncertain provenance named the Civilisation Travelers Foundation, which is chaired by an AKP mayor.
The materials are also superb. Chats hostile to Atatürk have been envisaged in which the founding period of the Republic is trashed. As if this were not enough, these religious chats also include blatant party propaganda and this is being facilitated by state civil servants. For example, there is the following chat topic: “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.”
A single party state has been established with the keywords: brotherhood, religious order, politics and commerce. State civil servants have been made into party propaganda servants. Children are to be deprived of peace at home, too, subjected as they are to religious education from morning to night.
Does the Ministry of National Education suppose holding home chats that praise a political party’s general chair under a programme devised by AKP mayors’ foundations to be an educational activity? Turkey is at rock bottom in all international tests. This is a ministry that has brought this degree of discredit to the country’s education system and is stealing the country’s future. It no longer merits a name like National Education. This ministry is a national problem which the AKP and the religious orders that prop it up use to gather militants for themselves and which milks the state budget.