Religion, State and Education: Turkish and American Perspectives
Abstract
Turkey and the United States provide fascinating points of comparison with regard to the role of religion in public life, and particularly the role of religion in each nation鈥檚 educational landscape. Turkey鈥檚 government was strongly颅鈥攅ven stridently鈥攕ecular for eighty years, but in the last decade Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo臒an has led a series of major reforms to make the state and its schools more accommodating to the religious beliefs and practices of its citizens. In this talk, Owens will draw upon research and fieldwork from a recent trip to Turkey to examine why Turkish educational reforms are so controversial, and what they can tell us about our own national debate about religion, education and the state.
Speaker Bio
Erik Owens聽is associate director of the Boisi Center and adjunct assistant professor of theology and international studies at Boston College. His research explores a variety of intersections between religion and public life, with particular attention to the challenge of fostering the common good of a religiously diverse society. He is a contributor to and co-editor of three books:聽Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape听(2009),听Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning聽(2004) and聽The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics聽(2003), the last of which was called a "must read" by聽Foreign Affairs聽in 2009. Co-chair of the American Academy of Religion's Religion and Politics section, he also sits on the AAR's Committee for the Public Understanding of Religion and the steering committee of the AAR's "Religion and Public Schools: International Perspectives" group. He received his Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Chicago, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. from Duke University.
Event Photos
Erik Owens, Associate Director of the Boisi Center, speaks during a lunch colloquium on April 17, 2013.
Photos by Kerry Burke, MTS Photography
Event Recap
Turkey and the United States provide fascinating points of comparison with regard to the role of religion in public life, and particularly the role of reli颅gion in each nation鈥檚 educational landscape. Drawing upon current research as well as fieldwork from a recent trip to Turkey, Boisi Cen颅ter associate director Erik Owens spoke about recent educational and constitutional reforms in Tur颅key on April 17 at the Center鈥檚 final lunch colloquium of the year.
Turkey鈥檚 government was strongly鈥攅ven stridently鈥攕ecular for eighty years, but in the last decade Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has championed a series of major reforms to make the state and its schools more accommodating to the religious beliefs and practices of its citizens. Several of these reforms have broadened the influence of Imam Hatip schools, public vocational schools originally created in the 1920s to train religious leaders in state-sanctioned forms of Sunni Islam, but which now feature a broader curriculum focused on religious, moral and civic leadership. All Turk颅ish schools provide civic education and require recitation of an ethno-nationalist pledge of allegiance. But the five percent of Turks (including the Prime Minister) who are Imam Hatip graduates form a cohesive network of citizens who embrace and endorse a religious conception of Turkishness at odds with the previously dominant secularism. This shift toward greater accommodation of religion is occuring as Turkey enjoys a booming economy and increased stature in regional and global affairs, a fact that makes Turkey a key country to watch as its Arab neighbors seek stability amidst revolutions and wars.
A passionate discussion period followed Owens鈥檚 talk, highlighting the expertise of theologians and political scientists as well as the lived experi颅ences of several Turks, Armenians and Kurds in attendance.
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Further Reading
Diane L. Moore.聽聽(Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Stephen Prothero.聽聽(Harper SanFrancisco, 2007).
Kent Greenawalt,聽聽(Princeton, 2005).
James Fraser.聽.聽(St. Martin, 1999).
Erik Owens.聽Taking the "Public" Out of Our Schools: The Political, Constitutional, and Civic Implication of Private School Vouchers.聽(Journal of Church and State, 2002).
Berna Turam.聽聽(Stanford, 2007).
Iren Ozgur.聽聽(Cambridge, 2012).
Jenny White.聽. (Princeton, 2013).
Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.聽. (Princeton, 2007).
Warren Nord.聽. (University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Warren Nord.聽. (Oxford, 2010).
聽(The New York Times, May 4th, 2008).
聽(Reuters, March 27th, 2012).
聽(BBC, March 31st, 2012).
Conference on聽聽(The Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, 2012)
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On April 9th, 2013, Turkish Parliament agreed to extend the deadline of the ongoing debate about聽聽that could have important consequences for Turkey's religious and cultural minorities.