Rise of Turkish Islamic schooling upsets secular parents


  • World
  • Tuesday, 02 Dec 2014

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan addresses the media during a news conference at the Presidential Palace in Ankara December 1, 2014. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has seen a sharp rise in religious schooling under reforms which President Tayyip Erdogan casts as a defence against moral decay, but which opponents see as an unwanted drive to shape a more Islamic nation.

Almost a million students are enrolled in "imam hatip" schools this year, up from just 65,000 in 2002 when Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party first came to power, he told the opening of one of the schools in Ankara last month.

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