The 19th Asia Pacific Research Prize (Iue Prize) winner: Dr. Manami Ueno

- Summary -

  In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, with the aim of shaping the Turkish national identity and bringing about social changes under the principle of secularism, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished various social institutions that had been based on religion. As part of this reform, his administration removed all religious education from the public education curriculum. However, in 1949, about 10 years after the death of Ataturk, the Turkish government began to offer elective religious education at elementary schools. Thereafter, such religious education, which focused on the cultivation of the Islamic faith, was gradually expanded to junior and senior high schools, and in 1982, religious education was made compulsory for all students from elementary school to senior high school. This dissertation examines how religious education was resumed and made compulsory in the Turkish public schools, and identifies the characteristics and transformations of Turkey’s religious policy in the mid-20th century.
  After Ataturk’s death, politicians in power were forced to respond to society’s dissatisfaction with Ataturk’s reforms without contradicting his principle of “laiklik,” or the separation of state and religion. Under these circumstances, they changed their interpretation of “laiklik” from the separation of state and religion to a guarantee of freedom of conscience by the state, thereby allowing the government to intervene actively in religion and resume providing religious education. This interpretation, which was also applied by the succeeding governments in the 1950s onwards, took root firmly in the country along with measures to win public support through the relaxation of religious restrictions. Furthermore, in 1976, the essence of Islamic reformist thought, which had been inherited from the late Ottoman Empire, began to be reflected in public education. Accordingly, instead of the former national identity, which had been based on secularity, a new national identity, of which an important component is being Muslim, was adopted in the country’s education policy.
  Previous studies of the history of the Republic of Turkey have tended to show that a foundation for a relationship of the state with religion in Turkey was built during the administration of Ataturk and that it has remained unchanged to this day. The discussion in this dissertation shows, however, that the relationship of the state with religion in the Republic of Turkey was developed through trial and error after Ataturk’s death, and then, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the direction toward the present relationship between the state and religion was established.