Education is at the heart of the core problems of a society, potential solutions for making a healthy society and for peace building as well. Education is the key to eliminating gender inequality, to reducing poverty, to creating a sustainable planet, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering peace.
US President Barack Obama has hosted students from Turkish schools operating in the US several times, congratulating them for their success in many endeavors, including project competitions. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen also received students from a Turkish high school in his country, after they won several medals in a science olympiad.
In yet another government-orchestrated operation targeting the faith-based Gülen movement, popularly known as the Hizmet movement, police officers and inspectors from several ministries and institutions conducted raids at schools established by volunteers of the movement early on Wednesday in the northwestern city of Çanakkale.
Ottawa’s Intercultural Dialogue Institute hosted its annual Interfaith Dialogue Supper and Colloquium on March 26, 2015 at the Turkish Cultural Centre in Kanata. In seeing over one hundred participants from so many different faith communities was inspirational in itself, among them the eight members of the hosting committee
Father Thomas Michel in his new book titled “Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society: Contributions of the Hizmet Movement at a Time of Global Tensions” explores how Fethullah Gulen and his movement are one of those voices speaking most vocally in favor of a world community, where different faiths and nations can come together at one table to solve the multitude of problems facing today’s world.
New testimony in a court case incriminating the faith-based Gülen movement indicates that police and prosecutors had pressured suspects to make false statements against the movement, revealing that the case was actually a plot developed by political authorities to taint the movement.
The Adana Police Department early on Thursday coordinated with inspectors from several ministries and other institutions to conduct raids on private schools, dormitories and prep schools established by volunteers inspired by the Gülen movement, despite regulations stating that only the Education Ministry may perform such inspections.
A project by students from a Turkish school in Bosnia called “Catch it on the Wing,” which is designed to produce hydrogen storage material and biodiesel from chicken feathers, is among the 20 global finalists at the 2015 google science fair.
Samanyolu Education Foundation’s Lawyer Selamet Şen has stated that the measures constitute to nothing more than a hate crime and discrimination, underlining that the institutions are both open for inspections which they have passed with flying colors.
On the other side, there is one very important thing that Indonesia must avoid. The Turkish government has been inching ever closer to becoming an Islamist nation, abandoning its secularity that has acted as the foundation of modern Turkey until now. The government’s power is also getting increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Inspectors from six different state bodies have raided several schools and educational facilities linked to the Gülen movement as part of a witch-hunt against the group that has been raging since twin corruption investigations targeting the country’s president and his inner circle.
Hatice Avci, a spokesperson for aid organisation Kimse Yok Mu, told i100.co.uk that last Thursday the newlyweds donated the savings their families had put together for a party to share their wedding celebrations with the refugees living in and around the town of Kilis.