US embassy cable - 04ANKARA2663

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 002663 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
DEPT FOR R (U/S TUTWILER); ECA (A/S HARRISON, P/DAS 
CROUCH); ECA/A/L (KERR); EUR/PPD, EUR/SE 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/11/2005 
TAGS: KPAO, OEXC, SCUL, PHUM, TU 
SUBJECT: NEW DRAFT LAW REMOVES BARRIER TO UNIVERSITY 
ENTRANCE FOR GRADUATES OF IMAM HATIP SCHOOLS 
 
REF: ANKARA 2600 
 
 
(U) Classified by DCM Robert Deutsch.  Reasons: 1.5 (b) and 
(d) 
 
 
1. (C) Summary: AK Party (AKP) government will press ahead 
with its new draft higher education law despite open 
opposition from the military and higher education 
establishment.  Under the existing law, higher education has 
been under the purview of the controversial Higher Education 
Council (YOK), set up by the military after the 1980 coup. 
YOK has been autonomous from the government, i.e., the 
Ministry of Education.  Rather than overhauling the troubled 
educational system, the draft law would transfer important 
decisions formerly reserved for YOK to the government, 
further reducing university autonomy.  The most controversial 
provision would equalize the university entrance exam 
coefficient for graduates of the religious-oriented imam 
hatip high schools who want to study in departments other 
than theology, a change demanded by AKP's voter base.  This 
move is viewed by AKP as righting the discriminatory ranking 
of entrance exam results but by the "secular" establishment 
as an effort to turn the university system into a fifth 
column for "fundamentalists".  End Summary. 
 
 
---------------------------- 
Highlights of New Draft Law 
---------------------------- 
 
 
2. (U) The new law would transfer the authority from YOK to 
universities to hire low-level staff and to the Inter 
University Council (university rectors and one professor from 
each university) for higher-level staff. If the draft law 
passes, all 22 YOK members will be dismissed and replaced by 
15 members selected by the President, government ministers, 
and the Inter University Council of Rectors.  A 
constitutional amendment adopted by Parliament May 7 removed 
the Turkish General Staff (TGS) representative from YOK. 
Instead of being selected by the President, the chairman of 
YOK will be elected by the 15 YOK members, ostensibly 
bringing more democracy to the process.  The law will also 
establish ethics commissions in universities to punish 
professors who plagiarize.  It will bring more objective 
criteria to hiring staff, shorten the waiting period between 
assistant and associate professorships, and legalize student 
organizations.  The most controversial clause will level the 
playing field for students of imam hatip schools wishing to 
enter departments in universities other than theology. 
Minister of Education Celik has announced that more 
fundamental changes to the higher education law will have to 
await a further constitutional amendment. 
 
 
-------------------------------- 
Background of Imam Hatip Schools 
-------------------------------- 
 
 
3. (U) The ostensible purpose of imam hatip schools (IHS), 
which developed rapidly starting in the 1950's, is to train 
future imams or IHS teachers.  For this reason, IHS are 
designated as vocational schools.  They are attractive to 
parents who want their children to receive a more formal and 
extensive religious education than the general morals/history 
of religion lessons that are compulsory under the rubric of 
"religion education" in middle and high schools schools.  In 
1996, more than 511,000 students were enrolled in IHSes.  In 
a move designed to swing the balance more toward "secular" 
education in the wake of the military's 1997 post-modern coup 
against the Islamist government of then-PM Erbakan (who had 
declared IHSes the Islamist movement's back yard), the 
succeeding government made education in regular schools 
compulsory until eighth grade, resulting in a drop to 193,000 
IHS students in 1998.  At the same time YOK effectively 
barred university entrance to IHS graduates to departments 
other than theology by dropping their university entrance 
coefficient to 0.3 from the standard 0.8.  A lack of 
university opportunities for IHS graduates caused parents to 
place their children elsewhere.  IHS enrollment dropped by 
40,000 students per year from almost 193,000 in 1998 to 
92,000 in 2001, and finally to approximately 70,000 today. 
PM Erdogan,s campaign promise to raise the lower coefficient 
renewed hope that there is a future in Turkish universities 
for IHS graduates, resulting in a rise of 20,000 in 
applications to these schools. 
 
 
4. (U) Under the present system, approximately 35% of 
secondary students (900,000) study in technical schools and 
65% in regular and Anatolian (elite) high schools.  After 
ninth grade, students in regular and Anatolian high schools 
must choose among three broad categories of specialization: 
math, verbal, or a combination of the two.  University 
departments are divided into the same broad categories.  For 
example, philosophy is considered a verbal subject, 
engineering a math subject, and economics a combination of 
the two.  The high school graduation score is multiplied by 
0.8 for all students, including technical students, who 
continue university studies in their field of specialization. 
However, the score is multiplied by 0.3 for students wishing 
to enter departments outside of their secondary school 
specialization. 
 
 
5. (U) In practice, this means that graduates of IHSes have 
their scores multiplied by 0.8 if they enter theology 
departments but have their scores multiplied by 0.3 for all 
other subjects, effectively barring them from studying 
anything other than theology in the university.  The new law 
would widen the choices for IHS graduates by placing them in 
the verbal category.  A graduate of an IHS who wanted to 
become an engineer would face the same penalty of the 0.3 
coefficient, but one who wanted to study history at the 
university would have his university entrance score 
multiplied by 0.8 just like a graduate of a regular high 
school in the verbal stream. 
 
 
----------------------- 
Revenge of February 28? 
----------------------- 
 
 
6. (U) The AKP government argues that these changes are 
necessary not to save IHSes, but to save technical schools in 
general.  In public and private remarks, Minister of 
Education Celik has argued that 65% of the population should 
be in technical schools, not the inverse, as is the current 
case. One high-ranking education official remarked to poloff 
that the new rules are required to save technical schools. 
It is true that IHSes cover most of the courses that regular 
high schools do and make up the difference of added religious 
content by requiring students to study an extra year.  PM 
Erdogan reminds interlocutors that he himself is a graduate 
of an IHS. 
 
 
7. (U) The new draft law is viewed by the "secular" 
establishment as an attempt by the AKP government to reverse 
the post-modern coup of February 28, 1997, which led to 
Erbakan's ouster.  In this context, the TGS issued a press 
release asserting the draft law is a threat to "secularism". 
In the secularists' view, opening up universities to IHS 
graduates is thus a move to pack the universities with 
religious-minded students and eventually fill government 
positions with religious "fundamentalists".  Forcing YOK 
members to resign will allow the government to replace the 
current board with a group more sympathetic to AKP,s aims, 
they assert. 
 
 
8. (U)  Secularists go on to argue that there is no need for 
IHSes, which produce 25,000 graduates annually when Turkey 
needs only 5,000 new imams a year.  Slightly less than 
one-third of the students are female, and cannot become 
imams.  The draft law was put together hastily, the 
secularists claim (the YOK debate has been going on for years 
and the current government began to consider draft laws soon 
after taking power at the end of 2002), with basically no 
input from YOK, to be enacted before the June 20 university 
entrance examinations. 
 
 
9. (U) The real victims of the university entrance 
examinations are not graduates of technical schools, whose 
entrance rate in regular university courses is more than 7%, 
the secularists, state, but graduates of regular high 
schools, whose entrance rate is approximately 8%. In fact, 
the secularists claim, the government,s argument that the 
new law is necessary does not hold water since in contrast to 
IHSes, the student population in other technical schools 
increases every year. 
 
 
10. (U) The present draft law continues the acrimonious 
climate and mutual distrust between the AKP government and 
Turkey,s academia.  The government has already taken control 
over scholarships from universities and frozen hiring of 
research assistants.  It was forced to retract a proposal to 
dismiss all rectors and senior administrators under public 
pressure.  From the other side, YOK,s uncompromising stance 
has exasperated even the Inter University Council, which 
negotiated directly with the government, essentially leaving 
YOK with no say in its future.  On the other hand, most of 
the teachers in IHSes are graduates of departments of 
education and provide the same education as in regular 
schools. Since students in IHSes perform poorly in university 
examinations in any event, there is little likelihood of a 
flood of IHS graduates into the universities. 
 
 
11. (C) Comment:  There is wide agreement on the need to 
reform Turkey,s overly centralized higher education system, 
though not on the details of how to do it.  Unfortunately, 
fundamental issues have been overshadowed by the debate over 
coefficients.  The head of the Parliament,s Education 
Committee admitted to the press that the new bill is prepared 
in reaction to pressure from the IHS base, despite claims by 
the Minister of Education to the contrary.  Unlike its stance 
regarding entry into the EU or Cyprus, AK Party, in this 
case, appears to be appealing to its base.  Instead of 
increasing budgetary, administrative and academic equality, 
the bill largely leaves important decisions in the hands of 
the government.  All parties concerned -- YOK, the Inter 
University Council, and the Ministry of Education -- have 
been unable to compromise and produce a bill which addresses 
the real problems of the education system.  Minister Celik 
has stated that fundamental reforms will have to wait for 
constitutional changes.  Meanwhile, the current poisoned 
atmosphere bodes ill for real educational reform. 
 
 
EDELMAN