Papers and resource materials for
the global meeting on
TEACHING FOR TOLERANCE, RESPECT
AND RECOGNITION IN RELATION WITH RELIGION OR BELIEF
Oslo, 2-5 September 2004 - The Oslo Coalition on Freedom of
Religion or Belief
Report
Of Academic Experts On Teaching For Tolerance And Freedom Of Religion Or Belief
In Turkey
By Dr. Recep KAYMAKCAN
It is believed that
teaching for tolerance and freedom of religion or belief in schools will make a
great deals of contribution in the construction of more peaceful and respectful
environment and positive attitudes to the others. Recently, Turkish
government has been carried out a
plenty of reforms on human rights dimension in the process of membership of European Union. Turkey is a
democratic, secular and Muslim majority country. Some of these promising
reforms concern with the expansion of freedom of religion or belief, which is
already secured by the Constitutional article. Without doubt, the legal
provision for freedom of religion or belief is a significant issue but the
creation of peaceful and tolerant atmosphere in school culture needs to be paid
attention to importantly. In this report, the issues of current situation, main obstacles and
possible solution for teaching of tolerance and freedom of religion in school education will briefly be
explained in Turkey.
- Religious education is a compulsory
school subject for Muslims in terms of the Turkish Constitutions.
Non-Muslims have a right to witdrawn from religious education lesson. In
spite of non-existence of a serious objection or criticism to the
compulsory RE in schools this legal provision may be criticised from
religious fredoom perspective. First of all, official name of this lesson
is “Religious Culture and Ethics Knowledge” and it does not aim at
conversion, nurturing the pupils in a particular religion or denomination,
or making the pupils more religious. Rather, its intention is to provide
general knowledge, mainly of Islam and other world religions and ethical
issues. Secondly, religious education was an optional school subject
before 1981 in Turkey. This experience indicates that optional RE in
school did not create a positive environment for tolerance and respect to
others. Consequently, it was observed that there was a division between
the pupils who selected to take RE lesson and those who did not in a
society whose members are too sensitive in religious issues. Taking
Turkey’s conditions into account, it seems to me, the compulsory RE should
be continued with laying more emphasis on the educational and pluralistic
nature of religious education.
- Teaching of non-Islamic religions; The National Curriculum of
Religious Education in primary and secondary levels provides a certain place for the teaching
of non-Islamic religions. However, the influence of traditional
confessional Islamic understanding on other religions (mainly Judaism and
Christianity) can be observed particularly in secondary RE textbooks. It
should be noted that important positive changes pertaining to presentation
of non-Islamic religions are carried out
in the recently revised
primary RE textbooks and curricula. The same kind of positive
improvements may be expected in the secondary level. The issue of teaching
of non-Islamic religion from different aspects receives a meager attention
from academicians and RE teachers. To be sure, this issue deserves more
attention in a global world and in the context of teaching of tolerance.
- Understanding of plurality and
pluralism; RE scholars, policy makers and teachers mainly recognize the
traditional plurality or pluralism and they ignore the internal plurality
in a religious tradition. In this context, although Turkish Religious
Education system tries to present non-denominational view of Islam the
Hanafi-Maturidi branch of orthodox Islam, in practice, is presented
without mentioning religious plurality in Islamic tradition. In Turkey,
there is a considerable number of Alawi branches of Islam. Some Alawi
groups critize this approach to RE, demanding that Alawi Islam must be
included in curriculum an textbooks.
This issue sometimes receives the media attention. Recently,
Turkish Ministry of Education has decided to include main features Alawi
understanding in secondary RE curriculum. It is expected that the
followinng year can put in practice. This can be considered a positive
step but it is quite early to make any evaluation about the contents and
methods of these presentations without seeing them.
- Turkey supports the human rights
education in schools. Turkey was one of the first countries that
established“ the Ten Years National Committee for Human Rights Education”
in 1998 and consequently issued the national plan of action in 1999.
Citizenship and Human Rights Education” course is given as compulsory
subjects in primary schools at 7th and 8th grades.
Besides this, there is an optional human rights and democracy lessons in
secondary schools. Nonetheless, there are some deficiencies in this course
in terms of its extra-ordinary stress on the state authority,
duty-oriented approaches to the human rights, and state security’s
priority over the human rights.
- As regards teaching tolerance, one of
the most important problems is connected to the present pedogical
understanding in schools such a RE and history courses etc. It seems,
critical and emphatical approaches have not been given sufficient
importance. I think that this problem cannot be solved only on the basis
of school textbooks or curriculum. What we need is that teachers, policy
makers, civil organizations give primary importance to this issue,
especially teachers are to be taught in service training and are given
necessary materials on this matter. There is an increasing academic or
non-academic meetings on inter-faith dialogies and tolerance organised by
non-govermental organization or universities but the educational dimension
of this matter is mainly neglected. For this reason, to pay academic and
public attention this issue, a symposium on teaching for tolerance and
freedom of religion can be organised in Turkey.
- Religious minorities, especially
Christians, have demanded to establish schools in which priest are to be
trained in Turkey. I think that this most frequent disputable topic will
be solved near future in the context EU membership of Turkey.