Turkey's Justice Minister and President Fear Islamism

In Turkey last week end, Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek complained, in a television interview, that the country's Religious Affairs Directorate is doing an inadequate job in providing religious education to young people. This has led people to accept misinformation about Islam as being accurate teachings, he said according to a report in Monday's Turkish Daily News. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, in his last address to Parliament before he steps down next May, warned that the country faces a threat from rising Islamism. Another report in Monday's Turkish Daily News quotes Sezer, a former chief judge of the Constitutional Court, as saying: "The principle of secularism is the core of all the values that constitute the Republic of Turkey."