January 30, 2015

Erdoğan’s fight against education in Africa

İhsan Yılmaz

Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited a few African nations, among them Somalia and Ethiopia. When looking at his media mouthpieces' coverage of the trip and his declarations, it seems the primary reason of his trip was to “tell” the African nations to close schools that were established by civil society groups and private companies affiliated with the Hizmet movement. He told them that the staff of these schools are foreign agents and, similar to what they did in Turkey, they could stage a coup in these African nations! Erdoğan's solution was simple: Close the schools and the Turkish state will open new ones.

That Erdogan’s War With Education In Africa

Vincent Kanayo

I was shocked last Thursday when I heard that the President Erdogan, was in Ethiopia to demand that his counterpart in that country should close Turkish schools. The schools, it would turn out, are owned by affiliated of Cleric Fethullah Gulen, his former ally but now greatest adversary. The president had vowed to financially strangulate Gulen and his Hizmet Movement followers for allegedly incriminating him in a corruption scandal in 2013. So since education is one big area the Movement engages in, Erdogan hopes to attack that base in Africa.

US assures private schools are under legal protection against closure

Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC) Executive Director Mark Gibb has said no one, not even President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has the authority to close down Turkish schools in the US in response to the Turkish government's bid to close down schools opened by entrepreneurs affiliated with the faith-based Gülen movement, which is also known as the Hizmet movement.

Foreign students express bewilderment over gov’t bid to close Turkish schools

Foreign students who are graduates of schools opened by Turkish entrepreneurs affiliated with the Gülen movement (also called the Hizmet movement) all around the world, have expressed bewilderment over the government's plan to shut down the schools, saying that the Turkish government is making a grave mistake in targeting these schools as they are renowned and praised for their high-quality education by foreigners.

Gülen has strongly rejected comparison to Iran's Khomeini time and again

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ's recently rehashed allegations that Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen planned to return from the US to Turkey in a way similar to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini are decades-old discredited claims that have been refuted time and again by Gülen himself in his published statements.

Human Rights Watch slams Turkish government for "authoritarian drift"

“Victory at the polls is no excuse for the Turkish government and President Erdoğan to roll back the reforms of the past decade and erode the institutions that make Turkey a democracy.”

UN takes up rights abuses by Turkey

Abdullah Bozkurt

Turkey's deplorable human rights record, particularly regarding the terrible situation of press freedoms and a partisan judiciary, was registered at the highest level this week when many of the 193 UN member states raised serious concerns about the backslide that Turkey has been experiencing under the authoritarian regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on rights and freedoms.