President’s veto to Higher Education is a political manifestation

In fact, Turkish universities except for a few are not success stories at the world level. They are better known as "specialized high schools." This government also did not attempt to reform YOK but has somehow challenged the authoritarian flavor of the law. The most critical aspect of the new law is to eliminate the "negative multiplier" that discourages imam-hatips i.e. religious high school graduates to study "secular sciences" and earn degrees outside of theology.

As I wrote on May 18 in this column: "We have a university entrance system so-called ‘central examination’ that measures who will go to which university and faculty based on enumeration of students with this test. The central exam is a typical standard test prepared in accordance with the curriculum of classical high schools but also applies a ‘negative multiplier’ to discourage the so called ‘professional high schools’ graduates to attend areas outside of their specialization.

Thus the graduates of the ‘professional schools’ not only take a standard test based on their curriculum but also face a negative multiplier in this selection procedure. (I.e. if their score in the standard test is 100, the multiplier 0.8 brings their score down to 80!)

The so-called ‘professional high schools’ also include the religious schools i.e. imam-hatips and these schools are taken to be anti-secular schools by some although they are totally public schools.

The government is now eliminating the ‘negative multiplier’ for the all professional schools and the kemalists take this as an attempt to take over bureaucracy by training imam-economists, imam-lawyers and imam-judges etc., by enabling the imam-hatip graduates to attend to any faculty if they succeed in the standard entrance exam."

The president`s veto is a total of 22 pages and most of it is a political analysis of "secularism in Turkey" according to the conditions of the country. Usually the president`s vetoes are technical explanations studying the contradictions of the new law with the Constitution and other laws. In our parliamentary pluralist system the president is not a political figure.

Politics is run both by the Parliament and the government. The president as also elected by Parliament is actually a symbol of the state and is an overseer. He is also expected to test the accord of the new laws erected by Parliament with the Constituion and other related laws and degrees. On this case he took a political stand!

Basically the president in his veto says that imam-hatip graduates, if they study theology later are acting in line with the Constitution’s related articles that "protect secularism" but if they study law, engineering, medicine, etc., they will be challenging secularism!

He says that each year we need 5,000 new imams (Muslim priests) but from these schools 20,000 students graduate each year. Thus each year 15,000 students from these schools who may act as a "potential threat" and may challenge "the protection of secularism" if they take another profession within the state!

All of the imam-hatips are state run schools whose curriculums are prepared by the state, whose teachers are appointed by the state, and all schools are continuously audited by inspectors that act in the name of the state!

According to the president himself there are 536 imam-hatip schools in the country and 511,000 graduates from these schools. All of these schools were opened by previous governments with the approval signature of previous presidents. They all knew that there were too many students that study in these schools than the number of imams we need! Why?

They all knew that these schools are not professional schools as the related law says but are "religious schools" that is regular in western countries.

As I have written before; this veto is a tug-of-war among the appointed status quo and the elected political bodies. The real question is: Who rules this country?