Turkey’s ‘hottest’ religious education teacher shakes social media

BURSA

Turkey’s answer to Pietro Boselli, the hottest math teacher in the world, teaches Islam to school children.

Meet Serhat Karanfil, a religious culture and ethics class teacher from the western Turkish province of Bursa. 

Karanfil has recently been put in the public spotlight in Turkey after many of his students posted his photos on social media.


They were soon followed by others, who revealed Karanfil’s own social media accounts and began sharing his personal photos hidden there.


Boselli, an Italian mechanical engineering teacher at University College London, had also recently been a social media phenomenon. Similarly, Jeremy Meeks was labelled on social media as America’s “hottest convict,” soon after “Alex From Target” hit fame.

“The interesting fact is that people are now following temporary celebrities that they discover themselves,” daily Hürriyet columnist Onur Baştürk said on Karanfil’s new-found fame, stressing the next such celebrity could be a Turkish construction worker. “Who knows?” Baştürk said.


Meanwhile, Turkish schoolgirls keep voicing their admiration for Karanfil.


“Let me have a religious class teacher like you and I will start covering myself with the Islamic veil,” Baştürk quoted one schoolgirl as saying on social media.


Turkey’s religious education classes have been controversial. The European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) ruled in December 2014 that high school students must be allowed to opt out of this class, which are currently compulsory.

The class curriculum was slammed by critics for being based exclusively on the Sunni understanding of Islam while overwhelmingly ignoring other sects and religions.