Changes to the Turkish secondary school science curriculum that has been expected to take effect by 2019 will be in place next month, according to recent updates on the controversial measure.

While the government sees this as the foundation for a simpler, "values-based" education system, for many in the politically-charged nation it's a troubling sign of religious influences.

Earlier this year drafts of the new Turkish education curriculum were discovered to no longer contain any mention of the word 'evolution', inspiring a call-to-arms from science advocacy groups such as the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Society.

The chair of Turkey's Board of Education, Alpaslan Durmu?, has since outlined on the board's website the specific changes to the nation's primary and secondary curriculum, one of which is the removal of the grade 9 topic "Origin of Life and Evolution".