‘EDUCATION IS NO JOKE’

Prof. Dr. İlber Ortaylı, Honorary Member of the Turkish Historical Society, pointed that education system in Turkey needed to be reexamined and he said, “Education is no joke”. Prof. Dr. Ortaylı, who was invited as the guest speaker by IUE Political Platform Club, stated that Turkey would take place among rare countries with young population.

Prof. Dr. Ortaylı, who addressed the youth at IUE Amphitheatre, said, “Population growth is decreasing. Turkey will become one of the rare countries with young population in the midst of this century. I hope they get their act together despite the remarkable loss of quality in education. Education is no joke. Nations can no longer survive by leaving their entire nation uneducated and unschooled. Nations, who doesn’t invest on education, will experience a quality loss. Education should be elitist, and you can’t achieve this by opening universities everywhere. There is an urgent need for elitist education at universities”.

Prof. Dr. Ortaylı, who indicated that history knowledge of people was being harmed, stated the following:

“Historiography is not a business of journalism. I write, too. You cannot use academic language. They get on TV and make speeches. There should be a benchmark for democracy. What they speak isn’t Turkish. They pronounce all the words incorrectly. They use an accent. That is not acceptable. TV is a means of media where kids learn Turkish from. Their resources are useless. 1930’s was very different. You cannot write the history of 1930’s with today’s values. There are people like this. There is a trouble with people who are dealing with the Republic era history. They can’t approach ethically. They can’t assess the terms of that era. They can’t compare.”

‘We need to teach better Turkish’

Prof. Dr. Ortaylı, who pointed out that the history wouldn’t be written in coffee shops, said that negotiations in Turkey were not examined. “This won’t create a problem but it would affect other things. Improper use of the language is in question. They are messing with our grammar, accent, and dialect. We fail to teach the youth proper Turkish. They created this group within a generation. We cannot speak well about the future of a nation whose language is messed with. We need to pay attention to these,” said Prof. Dr. Ortaylı.