Cultural politics and vocational religious education: the case of Turkey

The ‘project of modernity’ that has transformed every aspect of Turkish society since the founding of the new republic in 1923 has been increasingly questioned and scrutinized in recent decades. Meanwhile, Islam has reasserted itself to become a real force in contemporary Turkish politics with ambiguous implications for long‐term social integration and political stability. Controversies surrounding religious education in general, and the Imam‐Hatip (prayer‐leader/preacher) schools in particular, exemplify the ‘cultural politics’ that has been going on between the secularists and the Islamists in Turkey. This article examines whether the Imam‐Hatip schools in the long run can play a positive role in the promotion of a broader educated Muslim base enabling the secular and the Islamic domains to cohabit successfully, or a negative role in which the schools are viewed as producing a new generation of Islamists resisting the secular establishment, thereby deepening the secularist‐Islamist divide.