Turkey’s Higher Education Board, or YOK, has abolished arrangements designed to effectively block Islamist-leaning Turks from obtaining university degrees essential to holding top public service jobs. The measure had been blocked earlier by the courts and denounced by senior academics as anti-secular. Education is one of the main battlefields for Turkey’s secularists and the ruling AKP, the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist party. The party’s opponents accuse it of seeking to raise the profile of Islam in Turkey and undermine the secular system. Turkey’s state-run religious high schools are required by law to raise preachers and other Muslim clergy, but many regard them as a breeding ground for Islamist movements, and the complicated university entrance system had made it difficult for graduates of such schools to gain a place at higher education institutions other than divinity faculties.

By Staff