[Music] reporter sian france 24 i'm marco and in this edition the split at the heart of turkey a sacred site in istanbul made into a museum by the secular founder of modern-day turkeys being turned back into a mosque once again by president recep tay bird around a project symbolic of what critics fear is a wider islamification of the state about acharya joins us now from istanbul this week's report is showing is this uh change this islamification of turkey something you've observed yes and in fact it's something that's kind of difficult to really put your finger
on uh in fact we took more than four months to uh to film this report and to put it all together and that's because we had no way of filming inside or anything in relation to these imam hatif schools these schools that are public and muslim and in fact the director of the school the ministry of education even the alumni association responded positively to our interview requests and yet every time it didn't happen and this is actually a very classic story here in turkey as a journalist it's impossible to get an interview from an official
source and then journalists are accused of being biased so of course they will be uh if they have a hard time staying neutral if an entire side of the story refuses to talk to them more from shona after the report filmed by her with ludicrous and kilian kogam turkey the power of the [Music] minarets [Music] hagia sofia has been a mosque since the 24th of july and osman is ecstatic [Music] my um workplace is just next to the aya sofia so i attended the first friday prayer in the square and then of course i visited
inside of the mosque inside of thai sofia mosque i wanted to see this place as a mosque yes i visited before and it was sad it was a sad experience for for me and many people i think it was a huge symbol for the conquest uh also for them for the muslim um existence in the city in his enthusiasm usman would like only practicing muslims to have access to the site you know that i don't like when i see people um just wandering around uh like visiting a beach or any a touristic place it's not
a touristic place it is uh something um that matters for muslim and you see that people many people really visiting like trees and only a small place people pray it is not compatible with the spirit of iowa sofia i think i understand people's um you know excitement yes it's a good thing they want to see it not that way i think for close to a millennium hagia sofia was the biggest church in the world before becoming a mosque following the conquest of constantinople by the ottomans in 1453. five centuries later mustafa kemal ataturk converted it
into a museum decision wasn't accepted was not record regarded legitimate by muslims and what is what's the jerk can we separate turk from muslim no we can't in this case we won't and because all that i say i don't care about aardan's motivation and i i appreciate i fully appreciate this decision and but in general in overall um islam won or will win we see at the end of course islam will then the president regards religious and national identity as one and the same he has been in power for 19 years that's an entire generation
and the ruling aka party has tried to mold it in its image foreign this video is called sen kimsen or who are you it was produced by the ruling ak party and lists the spiritual historical and intellectual figures that the party has designated as the forgers of turkish youth identity they're mostly men many of them from the islamic tradition the ultimate role model however is rejected erdogan himself among those absent from the video are non-muslims and secular leaders ataturk is mentioned only in passing and not as a model for turkish youth proof the akp is
trying to erase his memory according to this association dedicated to kimmel's legacy they're trying to erase ataturk they're trying to take him away from us they're trying to get rid of secularism in turkey most people are chemists secular and democratic and that will never change our essence is ataturk and no one can change our essence fairy day is the president of this chapter of the countrywide ngo she takes us on a tour of monuments in izmir dedicated to the man known as the father of the turks she believes her hero's legacy remains attractive the youth
are more interested in chemist ideals every day because they too are conscious of the importance of modernity of the republican system of secularism farkendall of turkey's nine public holidays four are directly linked to ataturk his portrait is everywhere and his message remains most evident along the aegean coast here as in the rest of the country every year life comes to a halt with a minute of silence on the anniversary of his death [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] members of the ngo dedicated to his memory most of whom are older get together and talk of
their boundless admiration for the founding father they can never take him from us no one can erase atari the anniversary of his death serves to remind us that he's immortal and that it's only his body that no longer exists i've never seen his body but when i hear his voice my eyes fill up with tears listening to his a gift from almighty allah to the turkish nation and that's why everything he did was met with success faced with erdogan's vision of a more muslim turkey these secular turks fear their way of life is under threat
in particular kimmel's advances in women's rights no there's no question today if i'm free if i can breathe if you can find me here it's thanks to ataturk and no one else i will never understand women who put that in jeopardy to this day ataturk remains a sacred institution insulting his memory can land you behind bars and yet in some schools his portrait is harder and harder to find [Music] this is the rechip type erdogan imam hatip school a public institution with a heavy islamic focus the president himself attended it and it has since been
renamed in his honor and renovated to the tune of 9 million euros these images come from a promotional video our repeated requests for an interview with either the director of the school or an education ministry official were denied [Music] dedicates about a quarter of weekly lessons to elective courses but in reality these electives are classes linked to sunni islam ishik studies imamatip schools and has watched their number rise significantly since the akp came to power originally created to train future imams president erdogan now wants to see as many students as possible get their education there
the fact that other religious or confessional groups don't have similar types of schools shows the state is not impartial these schools only exist for sunni islam we can observe that over the last few years the president of the republic often praises these schools according to figures from the education ministry the state spends more per student in these schools than elsewhere yet a wide majority of former students say they regret having studied there and according to the oecd the level of instruction is lower than in secular schools that have not been spared the president's focus either
the theory of evolution for example is no longer part of the curriculum yet it's in the scholastic realm that secularism is putting up its biggest fight the president himself has had to concede i believe that if one evaluates the last 18 years frankly we have accomplished historical advances in every domain but in the domains of teaching education and culture we have not been able to achieve the progress we'd hoped for we have a young more and more young people in turkey reject religious dogma a phenomenon that the local press calls deism or personalized a la
carte islam others go further like mesut and jihan and identify as atheists [Music] for us being atheists is a mentality that rejects all gods and illusions a mentality that rejects them and that allows us to live according to our own truths and that tends towards humanism for me being an atheist is mostly about freedom it's living through questioning and searching for truth without being subordinate according to a 2019 poll the number of young people who say they're religiously conservative dropped by seven percent but changing religious affiliations comes with a price i was working somewhere for
six years and until i became an atheist i never had a problem with my salary or anything why because i was still muslim but as soon as i became an atheist starting in february of last year my salary that was let's say 275 euros a month they reduced it to 165 euros the next month and then even lower to 110. my family is extremely conservative my father even traveled to mecca in southern kaba but no one can change people's mentality there's enormous pressure i was shunned by my family my friends left me and my wife
dumped me it's a form of psychological pressure wretched type erdogan was elected primarily by conservative muslims who had felt like second-class citizens because of their faith today their children are seeking their own relationship with islam many of them will be going to the polls for the first time in the next presidential election in 2023 jonah battacharia still weather shona thank you for your report clearly there are two versions two visions even of what turkey should be can these visions be reconciled today not really there is a real split in turkish society on one hand those
who have a more secular vision and lifestyle more european or at least more open to that part of the world and on the other hand this vision of turkish identity that has its roots in the muslim religion that regards islam as a central pillar of turkey today this researcher that we spoke to in the report told us a little bit more detail about this version of turkish identity in imam schools as well as those that we call normal schools there are now classes on so-called spiritual national moral and human values most of the time these
national values mostly reflect turkic values at the expense of universal values and ignore the perspective of other ethnic groups as for the spiritual values they're mostly religious today redshift type erdogan has built a discourse where those who don't define themselves as hidas muslim turkic heterosexual are not only in the opposition but they're accused of being anti-turkish when erdogan came to power there were many debates and these debates are continuing about how turkey would change how it wants to change i'm wondering if you were finding that he's actually managed to change the country to fit his
vision is there evidence of that well the next elections are slated for 2023 so he has uh two years or more to fulfill his vision but over the last 19 since he came to power we've actually witnessed the opposite in turkish society nothing drastic but definitely notable according to a 2019 poll 34 percent of turkish women wear the head scarf versus 37 10 years before that same study says 65 of turks today fast during ramadan compared to 77 a decade ago now these numbers are not just about young people they concern all ages now these
changes are apparent despite the at least 12 000 new mosques built by the president since coming to power in 2002 despite the reconversion of hygiene sophia and other museums former churches uh into mosques like in trabzon and of course despite the investments that we've seen in education in these religious public muslim schools so erdogan now has a new card that of a new constitution on which he is working as we speak and that he hopes could help him stay in power shawna battachari and istanbul thank you very much indeed you can see shona's reporter once
again via website france24.com this is reporters thank you for watching stay with us most of all stay safe [Music]
