HARVARD DIPLOMA MIGHT NOT COUNT UNDER NEW REGULATION

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 17 2007

Turkey’s Higher Education Council (YOK), headed by Erdoðan Tezic
known for his uncompromising stance against the more conservative
sections of the society, has released a new regulation setting the
criteria for the accreditation of diplomas from foreign universities,
announced in the Official Gazette last Friday.

Article 7 of the regulation states that in the event that students’
institutions of higher learning abroad include courses that "are
not related to the curriculum of their major and which violate the
fundamental principles of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey
or the principles and aims of stated in Article 4 and 5 of the Higher
Education Law, the diploma obtained shall not be accredited."

Star daily’s columnist Eser Karakaþ, who is also a professor at
Ýstanbul’s Bahceþehir University, referred to the regulation as a
"disaster" for Turkey’s education system. Elaborating on the topic, he
gave a theoretical example of a Turkish student accepted by Harvard
University. The student might elect optional courses from other
departments that bear no direct relevance to the field he is majoring
in and might therefore be denied a document granting his diploma
accreditation when he returns to Turkey after completing his major,
if one of the optional courses he took violated the new YOK regulation.

Referring to the bylaw as "fascist," Karakaþ further explicated that
if a student took a course dealing with the 1915 mass killings of
Armenians at the hand of the Ottomans, which Armenians claim were
tantamount to a "genocide," for a semester while he was majoring
in a completely different subject, then he wouldn’t be considered a
university graduate according to the YOK regulation. The articles of
the Higher Education Law mentioned in the regulation emphasize, among
many other principles, commitment to the revolutions and principles
of Ataturk, commitment to raising individuals who "know their duties
and responsibilities before the State of the Republic of Turkey and
act habitually according to these" or who are "creative and elite
partners of the Turkish State as an undividable whole with its country
and nation."

Karakaþ said the only understandable reason for YOK to reject a diploma
acquired elsewhere would be suspicion about the credibility of a given
educational institution. He stated that the regulation proved that YOK
has taken a stance against "skepticism" — a quality he said YOK shared
with both "religious fundamentalism" and "Kemalist fundamentalism."

Pointing out that YOK consistently denied accreditation to certain
overseas universities, Karakaþ maintained that this was understandable
because of their questionable quality. However judging whether to
grant accreditation by the content of the "elective courses" is
something entirely incompatible with the spirit of academia.

In addition to its philosophically and ethically questionable nature,
the regulation also poses legal questions. According to the regulation,
if the same university student at Harvard took an "Armenian genocide"
course because it was a requirement of his major, YOK would accredit
his diploma. However another student who took the same course as an
elective class would be denied an equivalent Turkish diploma under
the new YOK regulation.

–Boundary_(ID_iGbeJJki6UtxML+4jzJTiQ )–