Turkish government allocates huge budget for Islamic schools

The Ministry of National Education (MEB) will spend at least 6.6 billion TL [~ $2 billion] on Islamic imam hatip schools in 2018
Thursday, 09 November 2017 20:21

The General Directorate of Religious Education has received a remarkable share from the MEB's budget.  While the Ministry budget in 2018 is 92 billion 528 million TL (~ $24 billion), increasing by 7 billion TL (~ $2 billion) compared to the previous year, the increase in the share of the General Directorate on Religious Education is a massive 68 percent. 6.6 billion TL of the 7.7 billion TL allocated for religious (Islamic) education will be used for imam hatip schools. 

69% of the MEB’s budget in the amount of 92 billion TL was allocated to personnel expenses, and 11% of this money was allocated to the insurance premiums of civil servants, according to the report.

Within this scope, 80% of the Ministry’s budget is formed by compulsory expenditures. The budget that the Ministry would allocate to education expenditures next year is 19.2 billion TL (~ $5 billion).

With the new testing system for the transition from primary to secondary education to be introduced by the AKP government, Turkey’s children are being substantially forced to register in Islamic imam hatip schools or private high schools due to an address-based registration system. According to a report on November 1, the Turkish government has begun to open imam hatip secondary and high schools in almost every neighbourhood in Turkey with recent changes in the regulations made by the MEB. With these amendments, the number of imam hatip schools has increased four times compared to the number of science high schools.   

The Turkish government had also increased the budget allocated to the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) by 13.21% in 2018 compared to the previous year. With this increase, the share allocated to the Diyanet from the state budget will be 7 billion 774 million 183 thousands Turkish Lira (~ $2 billion).