Mustafa Akyol is an anti-Turkish, anti-democracy, anti-human-rights hate monger.
rick murphy
hate monger. His place is in a jail for life. Mustafa Akyol is
potentially very dangerous especially in Turkiye where PKK terrorists,
Islamist extremists of the entire spectrum of Moslem extremism and
other terrorists such as Armenian and Greek anti-Turkish hate groups
all are waiting for a good chance to destroy the democratic Republic
of Turkiye and establish their own version of extremist dictatorships.
If they had their chance, it would be a true blood-bath in Turkiye.
Mustafa Akyol is only serving these kind of destructive groups using
Turkiye's constitutional rights and freedoms. Shame on Hurriyet which
employs such a dedicated anti-Turkish hate monger making itself as a
staunch Anti-Turkish hatred propaganda newspaper.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=will-turkey8217s-caste-system-survive-2009-12-11
Will Turkey’s caste system survive?
Friday, December 11, 2009
The recent verdict by the Council of State, which annuled the decision
of the Higher Education Council to give equal ‘coefficients’ to all
high school graduates, is not too different from saying that blacks
can not sit together with whites on a bus, because they have different
‘legal statuses’ – a difference which comes from nothing but a belief
in inequality
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel laureate in literature, has an interesting
passage in his cherished book, “Istanbul.” He recalls his childhood
days in the ’50s, and tells how the urban upper class he grew up
within looked down upon their practicing co-religionists. “The nation-
state,” he writes, “belonged more to us than to the religious poor.”
Pamuk is right. The Turkish nation-state, born in the mid-20s as a
republic without democracy, belonged mainly to the secular elite. In
the Ottoman times, in fact, the elite were much more diverse and
included religious conservatives as well. But the latter were
systematically purged from the “center” of society in the era of High
Kemalism (1925-1950). In the “university reform” of 1933, for example,
hundreds of professors who disagreed with the Kemalist ideology lost
their jobs. The state was creating the elite in its own image, and
those who rejected being “re-created,” a term used by Mustafa Kemal,
were being sidelined.
The children of the damned
That’s why, in the upcoming decades, religiosity would become a
hallmark of the lower classes in Turkey. Those who go to the mosque
five times a day would be deemed as a “köylü,” or a peasant.
Yet things have changed a lot since the early ’80s. As Turkey engaged
in democracy and free market capitalism, the “religious poor” have
found ways into the center of the society. Today not all of them are
poor anymore, and thus they can create their own media empires, build
their non-governmental organizations, or send their kids to
universities in America. Moreover, the party they overwhelmingly vote
for, the AKP, has been in power since 2002.
But the Kemalists are no idiots. Over the years, they have refined the
caste system that they enacted during the genesis of the nation-state.
They refined their tactics, too. Direct military coups are not
feasible anymore, so they now use the judiciary as their main
instrument.
The recent decision by the Council of State to annul the decision of
the Higher Education Board, or YÖK, to give equal “coefficients” to
all high school graduates is a perfect example.
Now, if you haven’t been following the news closely, this might sound
like Chinese to you. So, just in case, let me give a brief summary.
The whole controversy here is about whether the graduates of the imam
hatip schools have the right to go to universities other then theology
faculties. These are official high schools created for raising “imams
and preachers.” Their curriculum is not actually too different from
normal high schools. Their students, too, learn history, geography or
math. They, too, wear jackets and ties. They just have additional
classes for Koran and hadith studies.
In other words, these schools are not, by any means, anything like
those radical Pakistani madrasas in which medieval-minded men teach
about the niceties of jihad. Studies have actually shown that imam
hatip graduates are fairly modern and quite diverse.
Yet for the Kemalists, even moderate religion is a big danger. That’s
why they have always resented imam hatips and tried to keep them as
limited as possible. They have argued that these are only vocational
schools to raise mosque personnel, and the Turkish state doesn’t need
too many of them.
But the truth is that these schools appeal to the needs of not the
state, but the society. Turkey is a bizarre country in which any sort
of private religious education is strictly banned. Therefore, the
official imam hatips, opened by center-right governments from the
1950s onwards, emerged as the only possible form of religious
education. Most conservative families send their children to these
schools not to see them as imams, but engineers, doctors or civil
servants “who also know a bit about their religion.” Hence, most
graduates of these schools, including celebrities such as Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, study not theology but secular sciences
in college.
Inequality for inequality
This “religious infiltration” to universities is a serious threat to
the Kemalist caste system. Thus the latter tried to restore itself
during the “soft coup” of 1997. The powerful generals of the time not
only shortened imam hatip schools from six to three years, but, more
importantly, they practically disallowed their graduates to go to
faculties other than theology. The trick was to lower their
“coefficients,” the number that is multiplied by their high school
grades and then added to their university entry exam scores. The
result was that an imam hatip graduate had to score much higher than a
normal school graduate to get the same result.
About two weeks ago, the YÖK decided to give an “equal coefficient” to
all students. But the Council of State rushed to annul the decision.
“These students can’t be equal,” the staunchly Kemalist judges
tautologically argued, “because they have different legal statuses.”
This is not too different from saying that blacks can not sit together
with whites on a bus, because they have different “legal statuses” – a
difference that comes from nothing but a belief in inequality.
So, this is where we are at right now vis-à-vis the caste system in
Kemalist Turkey. As for the question in my headline – whether this
will survive – my answer is no. It won’t survive.
Yet, at least for a while, it will continue to ruin the lives of those
citizens that it shamelessly discriminates against.
Grand Sen~or
secularo-fascism from my posting here on the Usenet and started using
it quite effectively, see:
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/05/the_latest_jewish_conspiracy_moderate_islam_akp.php
and I am sure he will adopt more SPE concepts from my site :
http://groups.google.com/group/AlaaddinsCave
mark this journalists, he is going to be very famous - soon.
> http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=will-turkey8217s-caste-syste...