ISTANBUL, Turkey — Turkey’s largest religious minority, the Alevi community, is joining forces with atheists to protest mandatory religious education for students as young as 5 years old.
The Alevi comprise as many as 15 million people who adhere to a mystical branch of Islam that broke off from the main Sunni majority.
“This is a forced course about the Sunni sect,” said Ali Kenanoglu, chairman of the Hubyar Sultan Alevi Cultural Association.
Christians and Jews are exempt from compulsory Islamic courses because Turkey recognizes them as religious minorities. But atheists, agnostics and Alevi adherents are unrecognized and therefore come under the state-sponsored Sunni umbrella, religious rights advocates say.
Technically Turkey is a secular republic. But since Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister under the banner of the Justice and Development Party in 2003, the government has been implementing policies that critics say are designed to transform Turkey into a more conservative Islamic society.
(RNS)
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