{"id":2883,"date":"2018-07-22T17:42:49","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T17:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2883"},"modified":"2018-11-06T17:54:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T17:54:15","slug":"free-thought-under-siege-in-turkey-the-crackdown-on-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2883","title":{"rendered":"Free Thought under Siege in Turkey: the Crackdown on Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

By SCF<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013 Crackdown on the education sector in Turkey victimized nearly 100,000 teachers and academics<\/h3>\n

Download Report in PDF format.<\/a><\/p>\n

The crackdown on critical thinking in Turkey with an unprecedented witch hunt targeting teachers, academics and other professionals in the education sector has dealt a huge blow to free thought in Turkey.<\/p>\n

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has jailed some 20,000 instructors and arbitrarily fired 34,185 public school teachers and 5,719 academics including professors from state universities within the last two years alone. They were branded as \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201ccoup plotters\u201d without any effective administrative or judicial probe and as such marked for life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been the single most lethal assault on free thought, critical approach and analytical thinking in Turkey in the history of the Turkish Republic,\u201d said Abdullah Bozkurt, the president of SCF, an advocacy group that tracks rights violations in Turkey. \u201cThe mindset of Afghanistan\u2019s Taliban and Africa\u2019s Boko Haram is very much alive in Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Turkey,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The government shut down 1,069 privately run schools, most of which were the nation\u2019s best performing science schools and were affiliated with the G\u00fclen movement, and closed down 15 universities that were run by privately held foundations. As a result, 2,465 academics and 54,350 teachers instantly became unemployed. With the support staff who worked in these schools, the total number of people who lost their jobs reached 65,214. The government also canceled the licenses of 22,474 teachers, making it impossible for them to continue working as teachers in other institutions.<\/p>\n

In total, 96,719 teachers and academics were purged from Turkey\u2019s public and private educational institutions. This number does not include the support staff that was hired to run schools and universities in administrative and other capacities.<\/p>\n

Most of the shuttered institutions were transformed into religious schools that are designed to raise a new generation of Islamist supporters for Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Justice and Development Party (AKP).<\/p>\n

When all the closed institutions are taken into account, the total loss in value including fixed property and land is around $100 billion, one source estimates. The crackdown included foreign students who came to Turkey for study or Turkish students who were sent abroad on government scholarships.<\/p>\n

Stockholm Center for Freedom<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By SCF \u2013 Crackdown on the education sector in Turkey victimized nearly 100,000 teachers and academics Download Report in PDF format. The crackdown on critical [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2886,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883\/revisions\/2886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}