The German language book called ‘German is Fun’ is distributed to 11th grade secondary school children in Turkey.
On its front cover, which can be found on the website for Turkey’s Education Information Network, several pictures feature people in student-teacher settings.
But one of these photos, the photo circled in the image above, has been photoshopped.
The original image was taken from Shutterstock, a platform of stock images, and depicts a group students stood outside their lockers.
However, a blonde student in the original Shutterstock photo disappears in the textbook picture and is replaced by a female wearing a headscarf.
The picture of the headscarf-wearing female used in the textbook to replace the original subject can be found on another website for stock images.
Later in the textbook, on page 62, a picture of a happy family can be seen.
One of the subjects in this picture also appears to be wearing a headscarf.
But this picture is also a stock photo from Shutterstock, and the woman on the left is not wearing a headscarf in the original photo, meaning someone had photoshopped the picture at a later date.
Turkey’s Ministry of Education has not yet responded to questions about the reasons why it made moves to edit the pictures in this way.
However, a number of groups have taken to social media to criticise the move.
Kadın Meclisleri, a women’s activist group, said it was within the rights of every woman to decide whether or not to wear a veil.
It added: “you cannot add the veil to anyone who does not wear one”.
Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim but also has a long history of secularism. The party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been accused of creeping Islamisation of the Turkish state.
Source: Euro News
