From Burak Bekdil at Gatestone Institute:
More recently, in July, Turkish Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz revealed that the final version of Turkey’s national school curriculum left out evolution and added the concept of “jihad,” as part of Islamic law, in the books. The new curriculum will be put into execution for first, fifth, and ninth graders beginning this year, and will extend to other classes in the 2018-2019 academic year. According to Yilmaz:
“Jihad is an element in our religion; it is in our religion… The duty of the Education Ministry is to teach every concept deservedly, in a correct way. It is also our job to correct things that are wrongly perceived, seen or taught”.
Although the Turkish government claims that “jihad” means a “spiritual inner struggle for salvation,” the official Turkish dictionary defines it as a “war fought in the name of religion”. More.
It’s hard to know who to back if the only choice is between one crazed fundamentalism and another. Backing the local boys may be safer but it is not a recipe for peace or prosperity.
Appeal to Turkish parents: Many Westerners don’t understand why Darwin supposedly had the single greatest idea anyone ever had, for the same reasons you don’t. It’s hardly obvious. Not when we look at the fallout.
But life forms do seem to have changed over time. That could be a curriculum subject worth your children exploring, especially for what we can learn about ecology on the planet we share.
We suggest: Yes, teach evolution—but cut out the nonsense
and
What the fossils told us in their own words