Head of Erdogan's overseas education foundation says they work ...

Levent Kenez/Stockholm

The president of the Maarif Foundation, a Turkish government-funded organization led by Islamists to promote political Islam abroad, has said they work to increase Turkey’s foreign trade and revenue from abroad. Maarif has faced criticism from the opposition due to billions of lira allocated to it from the budget each year.

Viewed as a personal project of Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Maarif operates internationally as an educational arm supporting his regime’s agenda. Established by law in 2016, it is managed by known Islamists and ruling party members.

The foundation also aims to cultivate a new generation of Islamist political activists aligned with Erdogan. Video footage surfaced in the past from Africa and other regions depicting students at Maarif schools chanting and praying for Erdogan during Turkish election campaigns or military operations in Syria.

Maarif President Birol Akgün, who appeared June 13 on Türkmeneli TV, a channel broadcasting to Turkmens in Iraq, discussed why the state established an institution like the Maarif Foundation. He asked, “Why do we spend budgetary funds on educating people from other countries?” adding, “Because these educated individuals are not just assets for their own countries, but also for us.”

Birol Akgün

Emphasizing Turkey’s development and economic progress as being dependent on its ability to trade with the rest of the world, Akgün said Turkey lacks oil and natural gas but possesses a skilled workforce. “We become wealthy by producing and selling goods globally,” he pointed out. “When we look at our imports, exports, tourism revenue and income from foreign investment, they account for 60 to 70 percent of Turkey’s $1 trillion GDP. How will we expand this? Only by educating people who cooperate with us, understand our language and culture and know Turkey and the Turks.”

It appears that criticism of the budget allocated to Maarif seems to have prompted representatives of the foundation to change their rhetoric. They now aim to portray themselves not just as an expense but as contributors to Turkey’s economy.

At a time when the Ministry of Education is experiencing personnel and budget shortages, the payments made to Maarif from the ministry’s budget have been increasing each year. On May 29 a decision signed by Erdogan allocated 5.702 billion Turkish lira ($176.8 million) from the ministry’s budget to the Maarif Foundation.

Tanzania Maarif school students attend a July 2019 program in a mosque remembering a July 15, 2016 attempted coup in Turkey.

The share of the budget received by the Maarif Foundation has shown significant increases in recent years. In 2019, the foundation was allocated $71.043 million. In 2020, it received about $35.142 million. The allocation for 2021 increased to $80.795 million, and by 2022, it had risen further to $100.053 million. In 2023 the allocation reached around $100.169 million.

It has been suggested that Maarif operates not only as an educational foundation but also as a tool advancing Erdogan’s interests and hidden agenda abroad.

For example during a consultation meeting held by Maarif in Abant on July 12-15, 2017, foundation president Akgün revealed that they aim to raise a generation with “maturity in the Islamic sense.” The meeting was also attended by representatives of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which controls a multibillion-dollar budget and oversees some 90,000 mosques in Turkey and abroad with over 140,000 imams.

At another meeting May 2-5, 2017, Maarif convened the administrators of religious imam-hatip or similar schools operating in the Balkans and other European countries. Participants from Germany, Belgium, Austria, Bosnia, Denmark, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Cyprus and Serbia expressed their desire to see a leader like Erdogan, who was educated in an imam-hatip school, in their own countries, according to a news release on Maarif’s official website.

In 2019 Akgün participated in a strategy workshop on Turkey’s military operations in Syria, organized by the presidency along with officials from the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior.

Akgün attended a strategy workshop on Turkey’s military operations in Syria, organized by the presidency with key officials on October 13, 2019.

Maarif has been actively replacing the network of private schools established by the Gülen movement, inspired by US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, which has posed a significant obstacle to Erdogan’s initiatives abroad. Gülen, a prominent critic of Erdogan, opposes the Turkish president’s manipulation of religion for political gain. Consequently, the Erdogan government has pressured foreign partners to close down these Gülen-affiliated schools and replace them with institutions run by the Maarif Foundation.

According to information on its website, Maarif currently runs educational activities in 52 countries. The foundation owns 467 educational institutions and 37 student dormitories, with more than 50,000 students enrolled in Maarif schools worldwide.