Minister Avcı: The difference between the Old Turkey and the New Turkey is very clear  
Minister Avcı: The difference between the Old Turkey and the New Turkey is very clear

Minister Avcı: The difference between the Old Turkey and the New Turkey is very clear

Minister of National Education Nabi Avcı pointed out that the difference between the old Turkey and new Turkey is very clear and said today the problems university is being discussed without being under the influence of ideological fixations and that this represents a great intellectual transformation.

Minister Avcı: The difference between the Old Turkey and the New Turkey is very clear

Minister of National Education Nabi Avcı spoke at the EDU SUMMIT 2nd Educational Summit which brings together executives of educational institutions and decision makers that shape the educational world.

 

“The record of old Turkey is not so bright”

Minister Avcı started his address by thanking the executives of the University Foundations Union for the good contents of the agenda of the conference saying “when I saw the agenda of the conference I saw very clearly the difference between the new Turkey and the old Turkey. This is how we used to discuss university issues in the past. And when I say in the past I do not mean the more distant past. If we do go back into the distant past we will see that our report card is not so bright. In 1933 we see that with the reforms the old system of “darulfünun” was abolished and the university system was established. You can observe the developments of those times in the articles of the periodical Kadro. Burhan Belge writing in the Kadro magazine says “when you see all these sweeping reforms being undertaken you can see that it is time to abolish the darulfünun system that has failed to keep pace with the advancements.”

Minister Avcı went on to say “late Dündar Taşer summarizes with great expertise how some people led the provocations at the Beyazıt Square (in İstanbul) and what the so called law professors discussed with the members of the military junta whoı were invited to Ankara in 1960. When Dündar Taşer went to the airport to meet the professors as the representative of the Junta the first thing the academicians asked him was ‘what kind of a university law do you require from us?’ 

Minister Avcı said he recalls what happened in 2004 when he was the advisor to the prime minister in 2004. “We held meetings to establish a new university system. I remember what we were told. Then I know what the people who left our meetings were told at the Land Forces Command headquarters. Now we read all these from the memoirs of those people.”

 

A great intellectual transformation

Minister Avcı said instead of discussing the past it is advisable to look into the future and added “what we are discussing now, what we will discuss at this meeting has nothing to do with the past. This is a sign for a great transformation. We are not discussing the university but we are discussing the educational system and we are discussing things without falling into the trap of ideological fixations. Of course you cannot completely isolate education from ideology. We know this since Althusser and yet we know this meeting will show us at what level we will discuss the issue.”

Minister Avcı said “I thank the University Foundations Union for determining the issues on the agenda, I thank the nongovernmental organizations for their guidance in this effort, to foundation and state universities, to the Higher education Board (YÖK). I hope we will all discuss how we can overcome the problems, if we cannot completely deal with them how we can ease the problems.”

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