This is the only thing left that connects me to Islam,” says Merve, showing me her bright red headscarf.
Merve teaches religion to elementary school children in Turkey. She says she used to be a radical believer of Islam.
“Until recently, I would not even shake hands with men,” she tells me in an Istanbul cafe. “But now I do not know whether there is a God or not, and I really do not care.”
In the 16 years that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party has been in power, the number of religious high schools across Turkey has increased more than tenfold.
He has repeatedly talked of bringing up a pious generation.
But over the past few weeks, politicians and religious clerics here have been discussing whether pious young people have started to move away from religion.
