As the Turkey Youth and Education Service Foundation (TÜRGEV), we held the launch of our project titled "Chorus in 75 Days, Musical Modes and Memorization with Meaning and Translation," carried out in collaboration with Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University (İZÜ), at the Bağlarbaşı Congress and Culture Center.
As the Turkey Youth and Education Service Foundation (TÜRGEV), we held the launch of our project titled “Chorus, Musical Modes and Memorization with Meaning and Translation in 75 Days,” carried out in collaboration with Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University (İZÜ), at the Bağlarbaşı Congress and Culture Center.
In 2013, following the speech by our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the opening of the TÜRGEV Hayriye Cemal Gülbaran Secondary Education Dormitory, we began our Quran memorization efforts, which have continued uninterrupted for ten years, and we have enhanced these efforts with an innovative educational method.
With the method implemented through the initiative of Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University faculty member Gülsüm Arslan, individuals already familiar with the Arabic language and Quran reading became memorizers in a short time by practicing in a choir format and using musical modes. The pilot application of the project began this summer at the TÜRGEV Kartal Hayriye Cemal Gülbaran Secondary Education Dormitory with sixty participants and was successfully completed. Among the candidates who worked six days a week for eight hours a day, twenty-five successfully completed their memorization. During the ceremony attended by Istanbul Governor Davut Gül, Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Assoc. Prof. Dr. Safa Koçoğlu, Deputy President of Religious Affairs Prof. Dr. İbrahim Hilmi Karslı, Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University Prof. Dr. Ahmet Cevdet Acar, TÜRGEV Board Member Esra Albayrak, Istanbul Mufti Prof. Dr. Safi Arpaguş and Project Advisor Prof. Dr. Özcan Hıdır, certificates were presented to the memorizers and to all stakeholders of the project.
Our Board Chair Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fatmanur Altun drew attention to the challenges and opportunities of the digital age and emphasized the need to develop new educational methods that can respond to the needs of the era. Altun noted that they observed more qualitative memorization achieved in a shorter time when memorization is carried out in a choir setting using musical modes, and she stated that this addresses today’s issues of lack of focus and quick boredom. She underscored that this marked a turning point for our foundation’s ongoing memorization activities and added that it was decided to continue the existing memorization programs in our dormitories using the same approach.
