Turkey’s Ministry of Education has instructed all public and private schools to organize events commemorating the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, in a move critics say is aimed at embedding the Erdoğan government’s official account of the events in students’ minds.
According to a report by Cumhuriyet’s Ozan Çepni, the ministry said the purpose of the events was to commemorate those killed, express gratitude to veterans, pass on what it called the nation’s commitment to democracy to future generations and keep “social memory” alive.
The ministry also said the events were intended to continue the fight against the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Ankara designates the movement as a terrorist organization and blames it for the coup attempt. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
In its instruction, the ministry described July 15 as an “honorable stance” by the Turkish nation and security forces against a “treacherous coup attempt” and as the “defeat of traitors” and the “victory of democracy.”
The ministry said the activities were also aimed at raising students who respect human rights, love and seek to elevate their family, homeland and nation, understand their duties and responsibilities to the state and adopt national, spiritual, human, historical and cultural values.
Critics say the language shows that the events are less about civic education than political messaging.
They argue that schools are being used to transmit the government’s contested narrative of July 15 to children, while unresolved questions about the coup attempt and the purge that followed are excluded from the classroom.
The criticism follows earlier concerns over the inclusion of July 15 in Turkey’s school curriculum and commemorative programs. Turkish Minute reported in 2017 that the coup attempt was to be taught even to preschool children, while the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported that July 15 and the concept of “jihad” were being added to the curriculum amid broader ideological changes in education.
The Stockholm Center for Freedom also reported that July 15 had been added to official school commemorations while several older national holidays were removed from school observance lists, fueling concerns that the government was reshaping civic memory through education.
Rights advocates and opposition figures say the state’s July 15 commemorations have become part of a broader effort to normalize emergency-era policies, mass purges and prosecutions by presenting the government’s version of the coup attempt as unquestionable historical fact.
