{"id":679279,"date":"2020-05-06T17:36:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T14:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/tr\/content\/?p=679279"},"modified":"2020-05-06T17:36:47","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T14:36:47","slug":"turkish-students-increasingly-resisting-religion-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2020\/05\/06\/turkish-students-increasingly-resisting-religion-study-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish students increasingly resisting religion, study suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Young people likely to challenge Islam and see themselves as less religious than previous generations<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Teenagers in Izmir, western Turkey.<\/span> Photograph: Bradley Secker\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Bethan McKernan Turkey and Middle East correspondent<\/div>\n<\/address>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Twenty-two-year old Esra, from Mersin, is even more bored than usual this Ramadan. Universities are shut and Turkey has taken the unusual step of placing under-20s, as well as over-65s, under a curfew, because many Turkish families live in intergenerational households.<\/p>\n

As a result, Esra can\u2019t see any of her friends. And a few days into the Muslim month of fasting, like many young people, she is now feeling even more suffocated by the religious restrictions imposed by her pious parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey normally don\u2019t know how I dress when I\u2019m not there but even in the house now wearing tight jeans bothers them and they\u2019re commenting on it,\u201d she said. \u201cThey think I am fasting but I\u2019m not. I have water in my room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite more than a decade of efforts by Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u2019s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) to mould a generation of pious Turks, the country\u2019s youth appears to be turning away from religion.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, banished religion from public life, creating a secular, pro-western republic that broke with the Ottoman past. One hundred years later, Erdo\u011fan has put Turkey back on a more religious and socially conservative path, aiming to create a \u201creligious generation\u201d that will \u201cwork for the construction of a new civilisation\u201d. Some members of the opposition nickname him the \u201ccaliph in waiting\u201d.<\/p>\n

The president has trebled the number of religious \u0130mam Hatip high schools in the country, steadily increased funding for Turkey\u2019s religious affairs directorate and increased the powers of local muktars<\/em>, or community leaders, who are usually pious men.<\/p>\n

Yet a study by Sakarya university and the ministry of education from earlier this year looking at religious curricula in Turkey\u2019s school system found that students are \u201cresisting compulsory religion lessons, the government\u2019s \u2018religious generation\u2019 project and the concept of religion altogether\u201d.<\/p>\n

Almost half of the teachers interviewed said their students were increasingly likely to describe themselves as atheists, deists or feminists, and challenge the interpretation of Islam being taught at school.<\/p>\n

Polling by the agency Konda in 2019 also found that people aged 15-29 described themselves as less \u201creligiously conservative\u201d than older generations, and less religious than the same age group a decade earlier \u2013 respondents said they did not necessarily cover their hair, pray regularly or fast during Ramadan.<\/p>\n

The overall drop in people who described themselves as religiously conservative was 7%, down from 32% in 2008, and those who said they fast during Ramadan declined from 77% to 65%.<\/p>\n

The shift away from religion among Turkey\u2019s younger generation follows a trend seen in many industralized countries. But some wonder if it is also a backlash to almost two decades of the AKP\u2019s pushy brand of political Islam.<\/p>\n

The 2019 survey only revealed a slight drop in religiosity overall. In a country where around half of the 82-million-strong population is under 30, however, even small societal attitude changes could have a dramatic impact on Turkish politics in future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young people likely to challenge Islam and see themselves as less religious than previous generations Teenagers in Izmir, western Turkey. Photograph: Bradley Secker\/The Guardian Bethan McKernan Turkey and Middle East correspondent Twenty-two-year old Esra, from Mersin, is even more bored than usual this Ramadan. Universities are shut and Turkey has taken the unusual step of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4092,"featured_media":658074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[10580],"class_list":["post-679279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-imam-hatip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}