Despite the fact that Turkey has recently adopted legislation against hate crimes, Turkey’s divisive Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not stopped his attacks with verbal expressions of intolerance and hatred directed at the judiciary, opposition parties, the media, business groups and members of the Hizmet movement, a faith-based civic movement inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
We are not convinced that shutting down prep schools will either improve quality of education in Turkey or increase educational equality,” said Batuhan Aydagül, director of the Education Reform Initiative (ERI or Eğitim Reformu Girişimi, ERG).
Adalet Binici, a 14-year-old Kurdish girl in eighth grade, became the champion in last year’s Level Determination Examination (SBS), a high school placement test administered by the Turkish government to over a million students nationwide, thanks to the supplementary education and training provided by a prep school run by the Hizmet movement that is inspired by education-savvy Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Speaking to reporters during a press conference at Parliament on Friday, CHP deputy parliamentary group chairman Akif Hamzaçebi said his party has taken the dershane law, under which all dershanes across the country are to be closed down and about 40,000 school administrators reassigned, to the Constitutional Court.
Erdogan may continue to demonize and even to try to criminalize the Hizmet movement in an effort to brainwash his people into believing that he is the only one who can save the nation. We will see if this brings him the additional votes he needs to be elected president.
A total of 55 students from 30 countries captivated hundreds of spectators with their recitations of naats — poems in praise of the Prophet Muhammad — during a ceremony held in the Aegean province of İzmir on Monday evening to celebrate Holy Birth Week.
The Ministry of Education and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government have been focusing on closing down private prep schools for university preparation (dershanes) and Turkish schools abroad instead of spending its energy on resolving critical problems in the Turkish education system, experts say.
Vural said that if the government does not protect its citizens who are involved in the Turkish schools — which are affiliated with the Hizmet movement, inspired by the teachings of US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen — but instead complains about them to international governments, questions need to be asked.
In an attempt to defame the Hizmet movement inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish government and its media outlets have presented letters sent by civil society representatives affiliated with the faith-based movement to foreign officials providing them with information about the situation in Turkey as “treachery.”