ANKARA: When Soner Akbal dropped his daughter at school last month, he had no idea he would become the center of a heated controversy over religious influence within Turkiye’s secular education system.
A 40-year-old forklift driver who lives in the northwestern city of Kocaeli, Akbal was just about to leave when the school bell sounded — and he realized it had been replaced by a Muslim religious chant.
So he went straight up to the head teacher in the playground to protest.
“You can’t chose a bell like that and upset the children!” he told the principle, later sharing a video of the exchange on WhatsApp.
The switch happened after the education ministry instructed schools to organize activities around the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, such as visits to mosques, decorating classrooms and having children show photographs of their family’s fast-breaking iftar meal.
