Erkan's field diary

Abbas Güçlü is columnist in Milliyet who has carved up a good place in education issues. He also has a program focusing on youth and education in one of the mainstream TV channels. It is not usual to specialize in a particular topic among the Turkish columnists. And I would certainly appreciate a columnist who specializes in education. However, he has such a crude nationalist view point and an anti-democratic attitude that his ideas on educational reform and his column entitled as 'dialogue' rarely points a progressive direction. Guess who might be his enemies?

Well, he has just published a column (here and here) that targets Istanbul Bilgi University. This is not the first time; if one cares to look at his style, one will feel the grudge there. Although we are never satisified with what we achive, we strive to be a truly progressive educational institute. Instead of praising the intellectual enviroment created- just to remind you the Armenian and Kurdish question as the most politically charged ones-, Mr. Güçlü bothers to use some rumors- yes rumors- to launch a new attack. This is exactly this man of status quo would do. Similar dogmatic people in charge curbed the progress when they had found out that the students graduating were not the types they wanted to create. Now, in his narrow-band imaginary world, he imagines a world of students that are stripped of any fragments of critical thought.

He is also paranoid with the funding sources of Bilgi University. Well, if they are really illegal or something, the judicial process would have already started. Some funding from Soros does not make one be a traitor but it seems that someone specialized in education can believe that.

In the mean time, in another column he says that the new YÖK chair's credits are running out fast. He hasn't been in the chair for more than a month and apart from some unfortunate statements we haven't seen him in action yet. How come one can be so pessimistic? Because the chair's one of the first statements was "Freedom for all". Well, this annoys some...