A friend in Turkey calls my attention to a dramatic reform of the Turkish education system favoring graduates of Islamic religious high schools, calling it the most important developing in the country since 1923:
ANKARA, July 22 (AFP)—Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government Wednesday hailed a change to the education system making it easier for religious school graduates to get into university, a measure strongly opposed by secularists.
The amendments, announced by the Higher Education Board, or YOK, Tuesday evening, had been blocked earlier by the courts and denounced by senior academics as “anti-secular.”
But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself a graduate of an Islamic high school, welcomed the move saying it “has remedied an injustice against freedom of education.”
The reform was a pledge Erdogan made to his supporters in the 2002 general election that brought his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, to power.
Education is one of the main battlefields for Turkey’s secularists and the AKP, the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist party. Its opponents accuse the party of seeking to raise the profile of Islam in Turkey and undermine the secular system.
Turkey’s government-run religious high schools are required by law to raise preachers and other Muslim clergy, but many regard them as a breeding ground for Islamist movements.
The complicated university entrance system had made it difficult for graduates of such schools to gain a place at higher education institutions other than divinity faculties.
The measure had been designed to effectively block Islamist-leaning Turks from obtaining university degrees essential to holding top public service jobs.
But the barrier was removed when YOK, as part of broader changes to the university entrance system, abolished arrangements that set different criteria at the exams for graduates from different schools.
The board, which previously opposed the changes, has recently seen its composition change drastically in favor of academics backing AKP policies.
But the AKP opponents slammed the changes.
Fikret Senes, a dissident YOK member, said the reform aimed “to shape the higher education system in line with the ruling party’s objectives under the disguise of remedying injustices.”
Another member of the board resigned last week in anticipation of the changes.
Last year, the Constitutional Court scrapped an AKP-sponsored law that would have allowed students to wear the Islamic headscarf in universities.
As I noted in the post above, Turkey has now crossed a Rubicon of sorts by commiting itself to support of insurgnt Uyghurs in Western China. And Turkey’s involvement evidently helped persuade Russia and China to close ranks against Islamists across Central Asia. There is now an arc of instability from Ankara to Islamabad, with Iran at dead center. The Obama administration, through fecklessness, propitiation, and incompetence, has made matters immeasurably worse.
