Christianity in Compulsory Religious Education in Türkiye: Forty Years On

In T & uuml;rkiye, religious education, entitled 'Religious Culture and Ethics Knowledge' (RCEK), has been compulsory in primary and secondary schools since 1982. Even though Christian and Jewish children are exempted from RCEK, they can still attend, and some have chosen to do so. Moreover, the RCEK curriculum seeks to present Christianity and other religions objectively and descriptively using their own texts, sources and assumptions. Hence, this article aims to examine the presentation of Christianity in a documentary fashion in the curriculum and textbooks of compulsory religious education in T & uuml;rkiye. The research question addressed is whether the textbooks present Christianity objectively and descriptively or not. The analysis shows that there are improvements in the presentation of Christianity in the current textbooks as compared with previous textbooks. However, there are also problems, such as passages that seek to negate some fundamental Christian teachings and instances of confrontational language.