Didim Today

The Turkish Ministry of Education has enacted a real revolution after 75 years of ignorance and has decided to teach proper spoken English. This is from the May 15 issue of Today’s Zaman: “The Ministry of Education recently decided that it would import 40,000 native English-speaking teachers to work with teachers in English language classes across Turkey starting from the next academic year.

The project will last for four years and aims to improve English language education in the country. The classes are set to be held on weekends and over summer vacation. Both native English-speaking teachers and Turkish teachers of English will be present in the classroom.” What does this have to do with Legal Corner? I believe that the state is now interested in teaching proper English.

These 40,000 future teachers will probably be citizens of other states as it would be difficult to find 40,000 native speakers who are also Turkish citizens and who would want to work as English teachers in the schools of the Turkish Ministry of Education. Since this is an official job offered to these teachers, the government will either use one of the mechanisms that is already in use for foreigners working for government projects or launch a temporary and new regulation that allows them to skip the work permit matter or provide these employees with easy access to work permits.

In any case, these teachers will have some sort of work permit. The point I want to come to is that when the government is intending to put pressure on an industry and regulate it, the regulation starts with self-regulation first. Once everything is in order, it can start to put pressure on private entities to become legal and registered. This new attempt by the Ministry of Education in some way is an indication that foreign teachers working for language schools in Turkey will be regulated. I would recommend that those who work illegally take this opportunity to start applying pressure on their employees to become legal and obtain work permits to avoid complications.

A blessing in Budapest wooden swords of the Ottomans Budapest has always been a special destination for me holding sentimental value, as well as historical significance. Even at first look you can feel that the city offers much more than many other central European cities and once you get into it deeper you will find out more about it. Regardless of its historical importance, it is a beautiful city.

The Danube makes the city more special to me. A long walk along the river, with its tranquility, is a rewarding way to find traces of the past. This reminds me about that sad song about the Ottoman Army during the Siege of Plevna (Pleven), defending the city with great dedication and success (Pleven is a city in Bulgaria) and commanded by Osman Pasha.

For Turks, “Tuna Nehri Akmam Diyor” (The Danube Says I Won’t Flow) is a quite famous song that gives a mix of feelings: pride, honor and sadness. I don’t know what song to give as an example for Americans or Brits to communicate the importance of this song. It is like a picture, this song says a thousand words about this momentous event. Anyway, life is not all about decline, and I don’t, at all, think that the Ottomans totally vanished.

Once I read in a book by Mustafa Armağan that “empire states do not die but they just transform into something else.” Turkey is not willing to become an empire, but there is no denying that the cultural heritage waiting for us to discover is there. The new people of the young Turkish Republic who were born after the change of the alphabet had not almost no chance of reaping the fruits of their heritage.

For many years, historical events of the 19th century were viewed in a negative light. All those false stories about the betraying sultan were designed on purpose and succeeded in frustrating a generation that grew up orphans in a nation exhausted from fighting for the last 50 years. The new people of Turkey turned their backs on history, closed the doors and started a new country which in many ways gave off the feeling of a theater. Having no ability to read even a simple Ottoman script, the young generation had no chance to go back and refer to the past.

I have some social science books from the first years of the young republic. These books comprise mainly commentaries from Western writers. With this limited perspective, no pride is taken in the writer’s own history. We simply made a mistake and ignored the past and its positive heritage, focused on a new target, reaching the level of civilized nations. Without roots, we tried to grow a great tree and, in my humble opinion, after so many years the level of civilization established by the Ottomans has still not been reached.

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