Cultural products that evoke the social East–West (or religious–secular) contradiction—the most salient theme of early Turkish literature—are in vogue today. In terms of mass reach, the television series industry is now the primary carrier of cultural narratives. Contemporary series draw on the fertile ground created by this social contradiction, the very one that led Samuel Huntington to place Türkiye in the category of a “torn country.” In his series “Doğu,” where he recounts his own journey, Doğu Demirkol reflects this tension within his family. Viewers will recall a scene about Qur’an memorization (hafızlık). The mother of the child receiving this instruction, when asked “what advantages does becoming a hafız have,” replies that one is granted the right to intercede for two people and bring them into paradise. The child answers the follow-up question “whom would you take with you?” with “Kendall Jenner and Dua Lipa.” Frankly, I did not recognize these names while watching; later, when I looked them up online, I saw they were foreign women—a model and a singer. The joke here lies in the contradiction that the child, whom his family has sent to become a hafız, wants to take into heaven ultra-profane foreign female model-singers. This scene is a brief vignette of the cultural hybridization of younger generations in today’s Türkiye, despite the older generations’ efforts—aligned with political power—to preserve tradition.
A similar situation was observed, this time in the real world, in the debate over “miniskirted Imam-Hatip students” sparked by a post on X by Abdurrahim Dilipak. Dilipak shared a photograph taken at the graduation ceremony of the Adana Hümeyra Ökten Girls’ Project Imam-Hatip with the caption “miniskirted theologians are coming.” Some agreed with his reaction, while others objected to policing the skirt length of girls. One user, criticizing the prejudice involved, responded by sharing a video of the girls reciting the poem “Kardan Aydınlık” at the very ceremony where the photo was taken. It can be called an intriguing snapshot and social-media exchange in many respects. The image, Dilipak’s reaction, and the responses it elicited prompted me to write this piece.
For some time now, the cultural hybridization and social dialectic (synthesis) taking place in Türkiye has been drawing my attention. Social dialectic, roughly speaking, posits that a new social composition will be reached as a result of a society’s internal contradictions and conflicts. In this vein, even at my own university I know more than one theology academic who, in recent years, has taken off her headscarf. From the perspective of the conservative-Islamic elites who hold power, this points to something not going as planned. In this piece, without delving deeply into the broader matter of social transformation, I will confine myself to an assessment in the context of Imam-Hatip Schools (İHO; middle and high schools). Before proceeding, I would like to make a few conceptual clarifications. First, in the text I will use “the miniskirt” as a metaphorical expression representing an outward manifestation of secularization. And when I speak of secular individuals, I will take this as a matter not of faith (iman) but of practice (amel)—that is, I mean people who do not take religious precepts as a determining element in their daily lives; this lifestyle can be adopted by believers and non-believers alike.
Given my age and my family’s socio-political stance, among my earliest political memories are my elders’ demonstrations against the pressure directed at Imam-Hatip schools during the February 28 process. In my child’s mind, some “bad” men who had seized the “state”—which was, in essence, a good thing—were tormenting “good” people. Even looking only from the vantage point of İHO, when one considers where we stand today, the transformation we have experienced over the last twenty years is dizzying. The number of İHO increased rapidly—an expansion in breadth—and their quality was raised through the Project Imam-Hatip High Schools, which were afforded substantial material means. Beyond the Project Imam-Hatips, these schools also, via various channels, came to enjoy better opportunities than many of their peer institutions. Ever since it was discovered that formal education, as an ideological apparatus of the state, can serve as a tool capable of producing outcomes upon the social fabric, the desire to command education and steer its content has become an arena of ideological struggle. And because İHOs are among the most important instruments of the current ruling elite bloc in Türkiye on this front, they have been the object of special attention.
The sense of belonging felt by the person and cadre who have served as trailblazers of the transformation and growth in Imam-Hatip Schools (İHO), and their appetite to engineer from the top down a youth who will build the future in accordance with the image in their minds, have loaded these schools with missions their shoulders will struggle to bear. The government that has ruled the country for the last twenty-three years, owing to its ideological commitments, has expanded and carried forward tasks imposed upon İHO far beyond their original function—originally designed, in a kind of “vocational high school” format, to train religious personnel in place of the madrasas that the Republic’s traditional elites had in effect shut down. Although İHO undertook its first serious expansion starting with the status change it underwent in the 1970s, with the consolidation of the conservative historical bloc’s power the contraction that came with February 28 was overcome, and the schools embarked on a quantitative and qualitative expansion unprecedented until then. In this process, İHO did not merely expand horizontally and vertically; with boarding options and comprehensive educational programs, it turned into a holistic project of forming the human being.
Preservation of Values
The first of the missions we have mentioned concerns the formidable secularizing potential produced in young minds by globalization, digitalization, and, as a consequence, instant horizontal access to information. Hierarchical modes of acquiring religious or other kinds of knowledge are losing their weight. In particular, the desire of conservative mothers and fathers to isolate their children from these effects being fulfilled by the state has become an important mission assigned to these schools. Within this way of thinking, students’ “non-religious” vocational and academic choices are secondary; indeed, one can even say that, at times, Islamic specialization itself is placed on the back burner. What is desired is not that the children become Islamic scholars, but that—albeit even with a certain superficiality of religious instruction—the existing way of life, culture, and manners be preserved. Within this mission, the social demand for İHO is a vehicle for existing with religious values within worldly life and passing this on to future generations. Academic studies tell us that, in the process of determining the overwhelming majority of children’s choice to attend İHO, the greatest influence is the guidance of parents or the extended family. Moreover, although the number of male students nationwide is higher, the fact that the proportion of female students is greater in İHO can be read as a projection of the traditional and protectionist family expectations we have been discussing. The ontological anxiety created by the possibility that their children will not continue their own cultural story leads parents to see these schools as a refuge that will at least limit presumed negative effects. Elements such as the desire to transmit their own religious and moral values to their children through formal education, and the absence of coeducation, likewise appear as reflections of this concern for the preservation of values.
In President Erdoğan’s words, İHO has the mission of raising a generation “attached to its national and spiritual values, whose foreheads touch the ground in prostration, who know their history and ancestors very well.” When the anxieties of parents with conservative values overlap with the political and cultural agenda of the empowered conservative elites—who themselves were educated in the same tradition and carry these concerns (even if, for class reasons, they no longer send their own children to these schools much)—the sociological and political pillar of the “grand İHO strategy” stands completed. To this we may add the politician’s desire to meet social demand under the pressure of being re-elected. Theoretically, this is in fact a perfect match. But do the students—the children upon whom projects are developed in order to “create them in one’s own image”—fit this picture with the same perfection? It is precisely from the ambiguity in the answer to this question that the matter of the “miniskirted Imam-Hatip students” arises. In carrying out this first task assigned to them, the malfunction emerges on the student side of the issue. For as horizontal expansion increases, creating or maintaining a student body composed only of the desired model becomes exceedingly difficult. At this point, quantity inevitably demands compromises in quality. Consequently, it becomes unavoidable that those who look with sympathy upon the grand İHO strategy encounter situations—such as in the most recent example—that they read within their own world as “degeneration,” which are products of the social dialectic. The logic of Gresham’s law (“bad money drives out good”) will operate in İHO as well, and in the end the possibility that this protective function will disappear could, in this respect, drive the project toward failure.
The Incubator of the Cause
Another mission loaded onto İHO is that these schools are seen as incubation centers of the Islamic “cause.” Although İHO originally emerged as one of the state’s ideological apparatuses to regulate the republic’s religious sphere, it has been evaluated as the incubator of the Islamic movement and a sacred halo has been formed around it. The role assigned to İHO within the Islamic cause is to form a “vanguard” class on behalf of society. To this end, many foundations and associations have been established in the name of İHO alumni, and the development of these schools has been regarded as a sacred cause. For attachment to these schools derives not only from a nostalgic sense of belonging toward the educational institutions people graduated from, but also from their being the most widespread institutional vehicle for the ideological human formation sought to be cultivated for Türkiye’s future. The concepts of the Imam-Hatip “generation,” “mentality,” and “cause” point to a commonality not found in Anatolian or Science High Schools. The recitation at İHO—nationwide, almost like an anthem—of the poem “Kardan Aydınlık,” which, though written by a Nationalist (Ülkücü), has come to belong more to the Islamist community, points to this role of a “school of the cause.” Likewise, in the trailer of the series of the same name to be broadcast on TRT’s online platform Tabii, which tells the life story of Mahmut Celalettin Ökten, the first principal of an imam-hatip high school in Türkiye, it is made clear that İHO is more than a high school—indeed, a matter of a “cause.” Accordingly, behaviors deemed contrary to the expected human formation and to acceptable performances of Imam-Hatip-ness on the part of students studying here are perceived as “acts that harm the cause” and elicit reactions.
It is at this point that the contradiction between an İHO burdened with a “cause” duty and the “miniskirt” begins. A miniskirt image within İHO is an indication of moving away from the point sought to be reached with the “cause.” For according to this understanding, the miniskirt or other manifestations of secularism are not merely an individual preference, but a manifestation of a polarized worldview, human formation, and political choices. The existence or emergence of such “products” from within İHO means the cause is being undermined, emptied out, or conquered from within. What facilitates the appearance, in the “incubator of the men of the cause,” of this style of dress—deemed political because it is perceived as a representation of secularism—is the ideal of spreading İHO. The realization of this ideal is a situation that makes difficult the mission assigned to İHOs of training a vanguard class. Even if bringing the cause to the masses is counted as a quantitative success, it also carries, due to the necessity of encompassing differences, the meaning of a “deviation.” The contradictory situation here can be surmounted with the notion that such students are shown forbearance by being treated as “müellefe-i kulûb” (those whose hearts are to be reconciled). However, the possibility that the manifestations of worldliness will increase quantitatively and deepen qualitatively in İHOs may also lead to the cause collapsing in on itself (implode), thereby creating a constant ontological unease and causing the “Islamic” reactions, as in the Dilipak example, to multiply. In this state of massification, it likewise amply carries the potential of diverging from the course of raising the cause’s vanguard or intellectual elites with the “essence” preserved.
The Conservative Middle Class
Another mission of İHO is to train the future conservative, urbanized middle class and elites. In Türkiye, free and high-quality public education has for years constituted the most important pillar of social mobility. Many who today make up the elite stratum of the conservative bloc in Türkiye attained their positions as products of the very Republican institutions they criticize. As part of the Republic’s educational network, İHO likewise contributed to this vertical mobility to the extent of its capacity. Today, one of the aims sought especially through the Project İHOs is to educate, within the Islamic ecosystem and with quality instruction, candidates for the conservative elite of the future who come from the socioeconomically lower-middle strata of society. An important task for İHO is to minimize the risk that students who, by virtue of their personal abilities, have the potential to climb to the upper rungs of the social hierarchy will be sacrificed to secularism in the Anatolian and Science High Schools into which they have been admitted. For these youth will constitute the human resource that will, in the future, bring to completion the political goals that the current conservative political elites may depart this world without having fulfilled.
The gaining of visibility and normalization by miniskirted or non-religious İHO students entails threats that the future conservative elites will lose their essence, shed their asabiyya (group solidarity), or “change neighborhoods” (i.e., defect to another social camp). What is expected of an İHO is that it not present an image of conduct or a lifestyle contrary to the bodily manifestations of the piety anticipated from it. Since the most visible of these manifestations are the headscarf and attire, the brunt has once again fallen first upon female students. For İHO is regarded not as an ordinary school system, but as an indoctrinatory institution aiming to produce a human formation that will serve as an alternative to what the “secular Republic” envisaged. However, the horizontal expansion I mentioned earlier—massifying this education rather than cultivating Islamic elites with a relatively narrow and select cadre—creates the condition of plurality that multiplicity so often, and inevitably, brings about. Whatever the average of society is, so too will be the students in these schools. This, inevitably, brings them face to face with, from their own perspective, the problem of the “miniskirted,” the “not wearing the headscarf,” the “not praying,” the “drinking alcohol,” and the like, Imam-Hatip student.
Tefrika-i Tedrisat (Fragmentation of Education)
Another mission loaded onto İHO is the goal of opening a breach in the Tevhid-i Tedrisat (the Law on the Unification of Education) so as to blunt the presumed “harmful” effects of an unsatisfactory Turkish modernization experience. During the monarchical period, Turkish modernization was a phenomenon attempted to be implemented from the top down, guided particularly by “avant-garde” sultans such as Selim III and Mahmud II and later by bureaucratic elites. Because it was initially impossible to uproot the traditional institutions that formed the backbone of the Ottoman established order, modern institutions were constructed in parallel to those traditional structures, and gradually these “cedid” (new) institutions expanded at the expense of the traditional ones. This produced a dualistic institutionalization and social fabric. The Ottoman search for synthesis in the legal realm, crystallized in the Mecelle, is a product of this. Education, too, received more than its share from this situation, with a split into modern and religious. The Tevhid-i Tedrisat aimed to put an end to this dualistic condition that generated negative outcomes. However, the fact that this unification favored modern-secular education was, naturally, a negative and even destructive development for the other side of the duality.
Although İHO was initially conceived as a vocational educational institution corresponding to the madrasas, as its raison d’être evolved into the missions mentioned above, it became a line of resistance for the conservative bloc against the dominant modern-secular educational order. With the long AK Party experience and the conservative bloc’s gaining broad control over public authority, it has become possible for the modern institutional order in education to be encircled by a religiously inflected educational network. The creation of “Anatolian İHO” as a counterpart to Anatolian High Schools, and Imam-Hatip “Science and Social Sciences Project Schools” as counterparts to Science and Social Sciences High Schools, are practices that can be regarded as the construction of a parallel educational order. In the spread of İHO, one can discern the aim of opening a breach in the “unification” that had been carried out in favor of modern-secularism in education. That said, we should also add that especially in the project schools the curriculum is largely weighted toward scientific subjects (approximately 75 percent scientific, 25 percent religious). My guess is that if an “internal” objection to this “modern” emphasis in the project İHO curriculum has not yet emerged—just as in the “miniskirt” metaphor—it will, under the notion of “losing the fortress from within,” arrive before long.
Should Imam-Hatip Schools Be Shut Down?
Young people from the secular camp sometimes repeat, half-jokingly, the slogan “Shut down the Imam-Hatip schools.” So what, in fact, should become of the Imam-Hatip schools? At this point, the elites of the conservative bloc who wield public authority need to take stock of these schools’ mission. If these schools carry the mission of raising “pious generations” by encompassing as many students as possible, then one must face the fact that “miniskirted Imam-Hatip students” exist and that their numbers may even increase in the future and change the sociology of the schools. If the issue is for the whole of society—even if secular—to be raised as individuals who at least know their religion (as Kenan Evren said when defending the Religion and Ethics course: “A person should at least know how to perform two rak‘ahs of prayer”), then the move should be not toward a quantitative increase in İHO but toward changes in curricula across formal education in general. However, in that case it would be a contradiction for the Islamist elites—who love to speak, when criticizing the “Kemalist regime,” about how a top-down social-engineering project fails—to think that applying the same method this time will yield positive results. If the devout shielded their children from what they saw as the “harmful effects” of a formal education unified in favor of modernity and secularity, the secular can do the same—indeed, far more easily—with the ample assistance of globalization and digitalization. If the matter is the continuation of the “cause,” this does not require the massification of İHO. On the contrary, it points to a structure composed of a small cadre of genuinely “believing” students. As for social demand, what needs to be emphasized here is the extent to which, at today’s level of technology, these schools in their widespread form can fulfill the duty of preserving the desired values—and even how much they backfire due to compulsory enrollments.
My view is that İHO should remain at a quantity sufficient to train high-caliber Islamic scholars who can also guide the Islamic world (and to provide the conditions for original and critical thought necessary for this to be possible) and to meet the country’s need for imams and theologians. If the conservative bloc massifies İHO by loading it with sociological missions such as being an instrument of social transformation or preservation, confronting the malfunctions mentioned above will be inevitable. One might reason along the lines of “If there were no social demand, we wouldn’t need this many schools anyway.” At this point, however, the special attention shown to İHO by public authority, the investments that enhance its appeal, and the quantitative increase in its supply can naturally generate their own demand. This makes the state of quantitative increase and—seen from the conservative perspective—“qualitative decline” unavoidable. On the other hand, the country’s most successful students who attend other schools such as Science and Anatolian High Schools, perceiving that the state treats İHO favorably, may feel like “second-class citizens” and be seized by the urge to head abroad at the first opportunity.
So what if the order continues in this way? I do not think the sociology of today’s globalized and digitalized world will much permit the engineering of the “pious generation” envisioned by administrators. Alongside globalization, digitalization, and easy access to information, reversing the flow of the river is very difficult due to the transformative effect of social dialectics. If, in the face of the flow of history and sociology, İHO is regarded as merely a dam, another question arises: how long can it withstand the force of the current? Hence, the Islamist elites’ producing İHO in greatly increased numbers and capacities seems, in a sense, to amount to a Pyrrhic victory. Yes, the devout may become elites in class, intellectual, and bureaucratic terms; but I am doubtful whether a “generation” will emerge from this. Moreover, with the emphasis on scientific courses in the project İHO curricula and the addition of new electives on religious sciences to the curricula of other peer schools, the education in these schools is converging. In my opinion, as in society at large, the gears of social dialectics will turn for İHO students as well, and neither the pious generation dreamt of by the Islamist elite nor a community entirely indifferent to religion will come into being. Looking specifically at widespread İHO, the overwhelming majority of students who will be raised there will, as a new composite, constitute a worldly group of people who nevertheless possess religious knowledge or learning. Still, ending with a projection about the future, and so as not to be swept away by the tendency of social dialectics toward excess in its historical determinism, let us place the final verdict in a fitting register: Allahu a‘lem!
