Turkey's Ministry of Education, responding to the parliamentary question, explained the number of students placed into high schools according to school types. According to the figures, while the Science High Schools are full, the quota of Anatolian High Schools was left empty by 1,7%, Vocational and Technical Anatolian High Schools by 45% and Islamic imam hatip High Schools by 69%.
The Turkish government has been converting a large number of schools into imam-hatip Islamic schools after coming to power in 2002. These Islamic schools, which had originally been founded as vocational high schools to train imams, had long been a matter of debate as their numbers constantly increased, excessing beyond the personnel requirement.
Under a scheme introduced by the government in 2014, about 40,000 pupils have forcibly enrolled in imam -hatip schools. In some districts, these Islamic schools were suddenly the only alternative for parents who could not afford to educate their children privately, since a recent decision of the Ministry of National Education has reduced the lower limit of the number of inhabitants of a town for an imam-hatip school to be founded from 50 thousand to 5 thousand. Despite constant attempts of the government, it seems to get harder to increase the demand for religious education.
