Rethinking Political Islam in the Age of Neoliberalism: The Governance of Education Systems in Turkey

Altınörs G.

The Pandemic and the Future of Capitalism: On the Political Economy of our Societies and Economies (International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy, IIPPE, 11th Annual Conference in Political Economy), 12 - 19 Eylül 2021, (Yayınlanmadı)

Özet

This article aims to critically analyze the impact of Islamic neoliberalism on the governance of education in Turkey since 2002. Islam’s relationship with capitalism has always been controversial and it has been assumed that they are ontologically incompatible to each other. However, moderate Islamic governments in the MENA region challenged this orthodoxy lately. Especially, the AKP in Turkey has not only upheld the neoliberal political economy, but it has also managed to incorporate Islamist politics within it. This article argues that the Islamic neoliberal restructuring in the governance of education systems in Turkey has two intertwined dimensions: (1) the continuity of the marketization of education that features an increase in the number of private schools/ universities with a decrease in public spending on education and (2) the Islamicization of education as a new paradigm that focusses on an ideological shift in schooling and teachers’ unions. It is plausible to maintain that neither continuity nor change framework provides a meaningful analysis on its own. Contra the Eurocentric understanding, this article finally contends that these two dimensions operate dialectically as not only neoliberal restructuring is ideologically supported by political Islam but also Islamicization is protected by the armor of authoritarian neoliberal restructuring.