Sowing the Seeds of Paranoia

The start of the academic year is always a good time to instill some wisdom and knowledge in the minds of young and impressionable students, which is just what Yusuf Ziya Ozcan, head of Turkey's Higher Board of Education (YOK), tried to do in a recent talk in front of students at Central Turkey's Nevsehir University.

The subject of the talk given by Ozcan (pictured above) -- Turkey's highest-level academic, essentially -- was the importance of Turkey's universities ramping up their own research capabilities. To support his argument, Ozcan brought up the subject of tomato seeds, most of which he claimed are being imported from the United States and Israel, with dire consequences for Turkish eaters.

Here's a translation of what he had to say on the subject:

The seeds of the tomatoes and wheat we grow in Turkey mostly come from abroad, because we don't have enough seeds of our own. They come from the US and Israel. As a Turkish intellectual, sometimes I feel very little.

I mean, can't we produce our tomato seeds here in our country?.... And we don't know the consequences either. You're buying these tomato seeds. There is something called 'genetic programming.' They can implant a genetic mechanism into the tomatoes and we can eat it without even knowing. We can be infected with some diseases that we don't know anything about. In the meantime, you can destroy a whole nation. They can implant such things that people who eat these seeds die in the meantime. There are things like that and it is very dangerous. Therefore our universities need to help us in that matter.

More details (in Turkish) here.

Beyond the disturbing thought of the head of Turkey's highest academic body selling a group of students a conspiracy theory built on bad science, it turns out that Ozcan's basic data is also wrong. Forced to respond to Ozcan's allegations, Turkey's Minister of Agriculture said that the country, in fact, imports only about 6 percent of its seeds from Israel. More here.

More than tomato seeds imported from Israel, perhaps the greatest challenge facing Turkey is the quality of its educational system, from the primary level all the way to the top (for a very interesting take on that issue, read this great blog post by Aengus Collins). Ozcan's Nevsehir talk may be an indication of how far Turkey has to go in dealing with that challenge.

Framing Ataturk

Continuing with the movie theme of the previous post, I have a piece up on the Christian Science Monitor website that takes a look at some recent films about Ataturk and the controversy surrounding them. The debate over how to define Ataturk's legacy goes to the core of the current ideological battles currently raging in Turkey, it appears to me. From my article:

It's easy to mistake Muratoglu Kirtasiye, a tidy Istanbul stationery store, for perhaps a small museum dedicated to the memory of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's secularizing founder.

Located in a bustling district filled with print shops near the heart of Istanbul's Old City, Muratoglu specializes in providing schools with Ataturk paraphernalia and is stocked floor to ceiling with items bearing his image. There are gold-colored busts, clocks with his picture on them, and framed photographs and paintings that seem suited for every conceivable setting: Ataturk riding victoriously in uniform on horseback, gazing pensively skyward, surrounded by children with a kind smile on his face, looking gentlemanly while sitting in a wicker chair and dressed in a smoking jacket.

"He's the world's biggest man. There's no one else like him," says Fadil Karali, the store's manager, scanning the numerous pictures of Ataturk, who died in 1938, lining the walls.

"He was the kind of person that, unfortunately, only comes once every 100 years," Mr. Karali adds. "He died a long time ago, but we haven't forgotten him."

But the question that seems to be increasingly facing Turks is which Ataturk to remember? Like the multitude of images in Karali's store, there now appear to be competing, if not conflicting, takes on just who Ataturk was.

One place where the battle over how to define Ataturk and his legacy can be clearly seen these days is on the big screen in Turkey. In the past two years, three new films about the legendary leader have been released: a controversial documentary that, despite its efforts to humanize Ataturk, was criticized for insulting his memory, and two biopics that were in turn criticized for glossing over certain difficult details and for overly romanticizing the life of a complicated figure.

Turkey is currently going through a period of deep political polarization, much of it over two unresolved issues left over since the time of Ataturk: What role should religion play in the public square, and what role should the powerful state play in private life? In many ways, it appears that the battle over how to portray Ataturk is very much at the heart of Turkey's ongoing struggle over how to define itself.

You can read the full piece here.

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

The Miseducation of Turkey's Minority Children

A new report issued by the London-based Minority Rights Group International takes a look at the educational challenges faced by minority children in Turkey.

From a Reuters article about the report:

Nurcan Kaya, author of the report by Minority Rights Group International, said a failure to provide equal access to education for children from non-Turkish backgrounds could hamper the country's bid to join the European Union, which has called on Turkey to expand cultural rights for its ethnic minorities.

"The discrepancy between EU standards on education for minorities and those in Turkey will ultimately affect Turkey's efforts to join the EU," Kaya said at a news conference.

"The EU should give this issue greater priority during Turkey's accession process," she said.

Turkey only recognises Greeks, Armenians and Jews as minorities under a treaty that ended World War One and doesn't afford special rights to other ethnic or religious groups, including Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of the population, Roma, Syriac Christians, Alevi Muslims and others....

....Officially recognised minorities operate their own schools and are able to teach some classes in Greek or Armenian, but are given as little as $1 per student annually in financial assistance from the government, said Garo Paylan of the Armenian Foundation Schools at the news conference.

Minority schools are unable to find properly trained teachers and updated textbooks, he said. A Turkish assistant principal employed by the Education Ministry is the main authority at the schools.

Religious education that teaches the Sunni Hanafi creed of Islam remains mandatory in state schools and non-adherents can only opt out of classes if they disclose their faith, which violates Turkey's secular constitution, the report said.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that religion classes in Turkey's state schools violate pluralism in a case brought by an Alevi father.

The full report can be found here.

[UPDATE -- In a column in Today's Zaman, Andrew Finkel points out the report's "unflattering" conclusion: "Although the education system could be used as an effective tool to promote tolerance, multiculturalism and peace, it is deepening fears and hatred in its current state."]

On a related note, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), recently released a report looking at the legal and bureaucratic hurdles faced by non-Muslim minority foundations in Turkey. Today's Zaman writes about it here. For some more background on the issue, take a look at piece I wrote a few years back for JTA.

Turkey's Ministry of (re)Education

Following an outcry, the Turkish Ministry of Education has put a halt to the distribution of a documentary which purports to tell the “true story” of the Armenian issue – that being that it was Armenians who slaughtered Turks in the early part of the 20th century, and not the other way around. The documentary, “Sarı Gelin -- The True Face of the Armenian Question,” was sent around to primary schools all over Turkey, and shown to students with the intention that it be used as an “educational” tool. “Sarı Gelin,” or the “Blonde Bride” in Turkish, is the title of a famous Anatolian folk song of Armenian origin.

From Hurriyet:

The documentary was criticized by academics for reflecting the official ideology of the Turkish Republic about the incidents of 1915 and undermining the claims of an alleged Armenian "genocide". The documentary mentioned the 1915 incidents. It is mostly criticized as unscientific and weak in its claims because it exaggerated the deaths of Turks while undermining Armenian deaths in an attempt to dismiss Armenians claims of "genocide". 



"The students were forced to watch that documentary, which indeed had no scientific background. That would only increase hatred and discrimination against the Armenians," the History Foundation of Turkey said in a written statement on Tuesday. 



Also, 500 Armenians and intellectuals have sent an open letter to the prime minister protesting this incident, daily Radikal reported yesterday. The letter asked the prime minister to exempt at least Armenian schools and Armenian students who attended the same classes with Turkish students from watching the documentary in order to "prevent them feeling guilty, ashamed and excluded from the others."


According to a report in Taraf (in Turkish), the decision to distribute the film was actually made by Turkey’s National Security Council, which has a committee that works on countering “false genocide claims.” Following a 2007 decision by the committee to distribute the film, Turkey’s General Staff bought 56,388 copies of the film – which show images of Armenian gangs attacking Turkish villages and of piles of corpses that are supposed to belong to Turks murdered by Armenians – which were then given to the Ministry of Education and sent around to school districts across the country. (An English-language version of the film can be watched online here – unless, of course, you are in Turkey, since the government’s ban on YouTube means the video is not accessible.)

This is the second time in recent months that the Turkish Ministry of Education has been involved in a pedagogical controversy. In January, during Israel’s attack Gaza, the ministry issued a directive for all students to observe a minute of silence for the Palestinians killed in the offensive. "This show of respect damns not only the cruelty in the Palestine, but also shows solidarity with the Palestinian people," the directive said.

Critics called the directive manipulative and an injection of politics into the educational system. “How can we describe such an action other than condemning it as a gross violation of [the] rights of children and [the] exploitation of them for some political reasons?” wrote Yusuf Kanli, a columnist with Hurriyet’s English-language edition.