[Discussion] (no subject)

[Gonul]

Sanirim aşagidaki yazi, çogumuzu, ekmegimizi kazandigimiz ugraş dolayisiyle,
yakindan ilgilendiriyor. Ancak, daha birinci paragrafta, bilimsel hata sayilmasi
gereken,  kabul edilemez denilebilecek kadar "süpürücü" genellemeler var:

Two decades ago, Turkey's then-military government created a Higher
Education Council to impose order on the country's unwieldy university
system. To keep politics out of higher education, the government decided the
council's president would report not to the prime minister -- who represents
the political majority in Parliament -- but to the president, who is picked
by Parliament but is supposed to be above politics.

Y.Ö.K., üniversite sistemi "unwieldy" diye mi kuruldu? Y.Ö.K'ün başkani
cumhurbaşkanina bağlandiysa, teorik olarak cumhurbaşkani  "supposed to be above
politics" oldugu için mi, yoksa o sirada "cumhurbaşkani" koltugunda oturan Kenan
Evren kendine bagli olmasini istedigi mi?

Daha sonraki paragraflarda beni daha da beter rahatsiz eden bir sürü söz daha
var.

Görüşlerinizi bekliyorum.

Gönül Pultar

"Paksoy, Hb" wrote:

>  Chronicle of Higher Education
> >From the issue dated July 19, 2002
>
>
>
>   Clash of Turkish Leaders Stalls Higher-Education Reform
> By BURTON BOLLAG
>
> Ankara, Turkey
> The president of Turkey and the head of the country's higher-education
> system
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> ALSO SEE:
>
> Silenced Minority
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> aren't speaking to each other -- and that says a lot about the two
> directions in which the country is being pulled.
>
> Two decades ago, Turkey's then-military government created a Higher
> Education Council to impose order on the country's unwieldy university
> system. To keep politics out of higher education, the government decided the
> council's president would report not to the prime minister -- who represents
> the political majority in Parliament -- but to the president, who is picked
> by Parliament but is supposed to be above politics.
>
> But that approach has hit a snag. Since becoming Turkey's president two
> years ago, Ahmet Necdet Sezer has shown his disapproval of the authoritarian
> style of Kemal Gürüz, the president of the Higher Education Council, known
> by its Turkish acronym, YÖK, by refusing to receive him.
>
> Mr. Sezer is a respected moderate and former chief justice of the country's
> highest court.
>
> He is a strong supporter of Turkey's efforts to enter the European Union and
> of the democratic reforms that the union is demanding in return.
>
> Mr. Gürüz, a professor of chemical engineering, is a hard-line Kemalist -- a
> follower of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish
> republic. Atatürk used force to break traditions he considered backward as
> he tried to mold a modern European state.
>
> The council president often appears to be spoiling for a fight with students
> or professors whose actions, he feels, threaten Turkey's secular order. For
> example, during the last three years, fearing a rise in political Islam, he
> has pushed the universities to expel hundreds of female students who refused
> to remove their Islamic head scarves.
>
> Responding to a Petition
>
> While Mr. Gürüz has clamped down harshly on peaceful dissent at the
> universities, Mr. Sezer has been a moderate influence, sometimes blocking
> Mr. Gürüz's moves. The conflict has prompted the beginnings of a national
> debate on higher-education policy.
>
> But some educators believe it is interfering with badly needed
> higher-education reform.
>
> The two men's differences are illustrated by their attitudes toward a recent
> petition campaign by students asking for university courses on Kurdish, the
> language of Turkey's largest minority.
>
> Mr. Gürüz has argued that students supporting the petitions are committing
> treason.
>
> He has pressured university administrations to suspend or expel participants
> and has loudly proclaimed his support for the criminal prosecution of some
> 200 students who helped organize the campaign.
>
> "There will never be Kurdish-language courses," he said in a recent
> interview at YÖK's large headquarters in the dry hills above this capital
> city. "Never, ever. This is nonnegotiable."
>
> A Flexible President
>
> President Sezer, on the other hand, has called for flexibility. He favors
> accepting the demands of the European Union, which wants Turkey to end its
> ban on the use of Kurdish in education.
>
> Only two months after Parliament chose Mr. Sezer as Turkey's president, he
> had his first clash with Mr. Gürüz. Periodically, faculty members at
> Turkey's 53 public universities vote for a new rector. They don't make the
> choice directly, but send the names of six of their colleagues who received
> the most votes to YÖK, which in turn chooses three of the candidates.
>
> Those names are sent to the Turkish president who designates one of them as
> rector.
>
> But when Mr. Gürüz sent YÖK's list of candidates for rector for 22
> institutions to President Sezer, he sent them back. The names did not
> include all the candidates who had won the most votes, and President Sezer
> is thought to have objected to that.
>
> For Dokuz Eylül University, in Izmir, for example, YÖK forwarded the name of
> a candidate who had received only one vote, leaving out another who had
> received several hundred.
>
> (When there are not six real candidates, several professors usually agree to
> put their names on the ballot so that the required six names can be sent to
> YÖK.)
>
> According to Sureyya Ersoy, head of the Istanbul office of Turkey's
> Fulbright Commission, the president "made his feelings clear that the choice
> of rector should better represent the choice of faculty members." The
> president later accepted the list after several changes were made.
>
> Since then, the two men have clashed again openly. In April 2001, Mr. Gürüz
> tried to dismiss Fikri Canoruç, rector of Dicle University in the
> southeastern city of Diyarbakir. Mr. Gürüz reproached Mr. Canoruç for being
> "soft" on Kurdish nationalism at the university. But President Sezer felt
> the YÖK president was being too harsh, and canceled the dismissal.
>
> The Higher Education Council has 22 members. Mr. Sezer has appointed six
> members so far during his term, and all are liberals who have opposed Mr.
> Gürüz on a number of occasions.
>
> The Reformers
>
> Four of the new members circulated a petition this spring among the other
> members calling for an extensive reform of Turkish higher education. The
> petition said a national discussion was needed to make the universities more
> productive and relevant.
>
> These reformers, appointed by the president, want stronger guarantees of
> academic freedom, a more effective system to evaluate teaching and research,
> more diversification of higher-education institutions, and a reduction in
> the power of the rectors by allowing greater participation by faculty
> members and students in university management.
>
> At a meeting of the council this spring, according to one YÖK member who was
> present, Mr. Gürüz and one of the reformers got into an angry argument about
> the appropriateness of the petition, and the reformer stormed out of the
> room. Later, he was persuaded to return.
>
> Mr. Gürüz argues that Turkish universities already enjoy more formal
> autonomy than do institutions in a number of European countries.
>
> Draft legislation proposed by the government and supported by Mr. Gürüz
> would, if adopted, give universities considerably greater financial
> autonomy, including lump-sum government payments, instead of detailed
> financial instructions.
>
> While welcoming the change, the reformers say more is needed. They also
> argue that YÖK abuses the wide powers it has over institutions by preventing
> dissent or even debate within academe on controversial political issues.
>
> Üstün Ergüder, the former rector of Bogaziçi University, who now heads the
> Istanbul Policy Center, a research institute associated with Sabanci
> University, feels the conflict between Mr. Sezer and Mr. Gürüz is stalling
> moves to modernize higher education. "The universities are in need of
> reform," he says. "But the fact that there is deadlock at that level, of
> course hampers the process."
>
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