Secular Turkey’s government heavily funded Islamic religious institutions to co-opt Islamists.

Evidence

Confronted by rising Islamist sentiment, Turkey’s rulers attempted to adopt fundamentalist practices and co-opt fundamentalist support. In the 1980s and 1990s the supposedly secular Turkish government maintained an Office of Religious Affairs with a budget larger than those of some ministries, financed the construction of mosques, required religious instruction in all public schools, and provided funding to Islamic schools, which quintupled in number during the 1980s, enrolling about 15 percent of secondary school children, and which preached Islamist doctrines and produced thousands of graduates, many of whom entered government service. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels contemporary debates about secular states funding religion to manage it; connects to French laïcité contrast mentioned in the next sentence.
• SEED: Angle for an essay on how nominally secular governments become the biggest funders of religious institutions as a political strategy.