Islamic Populism and Creating Desirable Citizens in Erdogan’s New Turkey

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments have managed to remove Kemalism only to replace it with an Islamist nation-building and social-engineering project that is as, if not more, authoritarian, conservative, and regressive than the Kemalist one. The Turkish education system has been transformed into a political tool to manipulate youth and mold them into cadres of a peculiar Islamist ideology supported by the Recep Tayyip Erdogan regime. This essay discusses four sets of educational tools that have been redesigned to enable Erdogan and his entourage to shape the worldview of younger generations of Turkish citizens.