Plans to abolish “prep schools” in Turkey have sparked a huge feud between two of the country’s most powerful forces on the micro-blogging website Twitter.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK party have proposed eliminating the schools, which provide private tuition classes to help high school children prepare for university entrance exams.
This has angered supporters of the Gulen movement, which finances and runs many of the schools. Numerous hashtags about the row have been tweeted millions of times over the past week.
#BBCtrending reports that the row points to deeper tensions between Mr Erdogan and the Gulen movement.
Are politics and Hizmet from different walks of life?
The possibility of rivalry or conflict between ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and Hizmet (the Gülen movement, which consists of followers of Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen’s ideas), came to the agenda once again when individuals known to be Gülen followers took the side of the judiciary in a debate between the government and […]
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Çağ Education Company in Azerbaijan held a conference to celebrate the 20th anniversary
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Erdogan’s bid to close Gulen schools in Africa opposed
Several African states have rejected Turkey’s request to close schools run by the Hizmet movement. Turkish President Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, who owns Hizmet, of involvement in the failed July 15 coup. When Turkish President Erdogan visited Uganda and Kenya in May, he sought to stamp out the influence of the Islamic cleric Gulen. He accused the preacher of using his connections to try to overthrow him, allegations which Gulen denied.
Kazakh students win medals at international science fair
HÜSEYİN GÜNGÖR Students from Kazakh-Turkish high schools founded by Turkish entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan won 12 medals in the Second Annual International Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering & Environment) Project Olympiad (I-SWEEEP 2009) held in Houston on April 15-20. This year, 600 students from 60 countries participated in the competition, where Kazakh high school students were especially […]
Disabled woman loses health care due to son-in-law’s Gülen links
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a member of parliament from Turkey’s left wing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said the health care benefits of a gravely disabled woman were cut off because her son-in-law was a public servant dismissed from his job by government decree.
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