Education Ministry Continues To Profile Non-Muslims After Scandal

The Education Ministry, whose profiling of non-Muslim citizens based on ethnicity was revealed in August 2013, still maintains this practice by investigating the ethnic background of non-Muslim students, the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos reported on Friday.

In August, it became evident from an official response from the Education Ministry to a query into the background of a non-Muslim student that non-Muslim minorities in Turkey were being monitored and profiled based on their ethnicity. They were also assigned numbers, a practice that dates back to the establishment of the republic.

The weekly Agos reported on Friday that this practice still continues despite the reactions that arose after the revelation of the scandal in August.

According to the report, a 5-year-old boy baptized in an Armenian church registered at an Armenian kindergarten at the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year. As part of its normal procedure, school administrators sent the list of students registered at the school to the Education Ministry's provincial branch. However, a statement was sent to the school by the provincial education branch requesting that school administrators cancel the registration of the boy on the grounds that the boy was not Armenian according to an investigation into his background. The provincial branch also requested that school management inform the parents of the student that they needed to cancel the student's registration.

In a similar incident, another student registered at an Armenian school of which his two cousins were graduates. However, the Education Ministry blocked the registration of this student for the same reason. The ministry instructed school administrators to cancel the student's registration. There are several other cases of students facing this problem.

Speaking with the weekly Agos regarding the issue, an official from the Education Ministry, who declined to be named due to regulations prohibiting public officials from speaking to the press, said: “First of all, the demographic information of the students and ethnic origins of their parents is researched. If there is no data about their ethnic origins, the students are prevented from registering at [non-Muslim] schools. Thus, their [the students'] registrations are refused. We [the ministry] are looking at the ethnicity of all Armenians, Greeks and Jews. We do not have a data bank that shows their ethnicity. We ask the General Directorate of Census and Citizenship Affairs.”

Since 1923, Armenians, Greeks and Jews have been assigned numbers in official correspondence between government institutions. A letter sent in August 2013 by the İstanbul Directorate of National Education to its Şişli branch indicates that Armenian citizens are given the number two. According to this system of codes based on ethnicity, Greeks are given the number one and Jews the number three.

Non-Muslims react to ministry's long-standing practice

Garo Paylan, an activist working for an Armenian civil society organization and the manager of an Armenian school, slammed the ministry's practice, saying that the ministry should stop profiling non-Muslims as soon as possible. “There is no legal basis for the ministry to determine which students can attend an Armenian school. The initiative to determine which students will be registered at the [Armenian] schools should be left to the school management. A commission established by school administrators or education foundations should be able to determine this.”

There is a law regulating which students can attend a non-Muslim school. According to Law No. 5580 on private educational institutions, the Education Ministry can determine which students can be registered at Greek, Armenian and Jewish schools operating in Turkey.

Parents preparing to file complaint against ministry

Parents of the Armenian students whose registrations were cancelled by the ministry have been preparing to launch legal proceedings against the ministry. Speaking with the weekly Agos, lawyer Cem Halavurt, who represents the Armenian parents, said that the ministry's practice is completely unlawful. “There is no legal basis for it. It is a racist, arbitrary and discriminative practice. The right to education cannot be restricted. In an earlier case that we won regarding the same issue, the court had clearly stated that this practice is unlawful and said the right to education is one of the main fundamental rights that should be preserved.”

The lawyer also said that the ministry refuses to stop the practice despite the court's decision and the reactions that arise among the non-Muslim communities. Halavurt also emphasized that the schools should be granted the right to determine which students can register instead of the ministry.

After Agos revealed the profiling scandal in August 2013, the Interior Ministry issued a response to Agos' report on Aug. 2, admitting that the “ancestral codes” had been kept since the Ottoman times and said they were periodically relayed to the Education Ministry, indicating that these records are being actively used today. The ministry claimed the codes were only used for “educational purposes,” as Turkey's three minority communities -- Jews, Greeks and Armenians -- have the right to run their own schools as per the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, a right denied to other minority groups such as the Syriacs.

The response to the scandal has been immense, with community leaders and intellectuals condemning the code system. Despite the outrage, however, not a single government member made a statement condemning the system.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)