Ask any Turk who became a victim of the Turkish education system about their experience with this strange admission mechanism; you will quickly realize what a big trauma it is.Imagine that many young people -- this year around 1.3 million -- for two years at least have forgotten what it's like to have a weekend. Early in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays they attended the private exam prep courses and tried to learn the tricks of a multiple choice exam. But this torture is only the privilege of those students whose economic situation is solid, because in order to ruin the life a young person, multiple thousands of liras are needed.
When I watched the students who earned high marks on this year's exam on TV, it was really heartbreaking. One of them was advising next year's victims to sleep only six hours a day and to forget about all hobbies. Another one said that he didn't study only when sleeping, eating and using the toilet.
But the overall results were really alarming: 60 percent of students sitting for the exam did not answer the basic science questions, and most of them did not reply correctly to even one single math question. The average score for the math section is only nine correct answers. The result also shows huge differences regionally: The students of the East are not as successful.
But despite these poor results, more than 90 percent of the students will be able to enter a university program. Most of them will join what we called “open university,” but not in the Western sense of it -- the students will follow their courses from the TV. The students who were not able to answer mathematics questions will be able to attend universities, but because of their poor background, they will not be the inventors, technology developers or scientific researchers; just like in secondary school, they will try to memorize the textbooks.
The other lesson that we have to take from the university admission exam is that education is not a right in this country but the privilege of students who have money to attend private courses and live in the western cities.
In short, this state -- which is so scared of free thinking and science and always suspicious of university students since they might be dangerous -- is very successful. This state aimed to create citizens who are just subjects, and it has them now.
Well, some people may think that a state should be as small as possible, should withdraw its hand from many fields but should at least treat every citizen equally in two fields: education and justice.
While we read depressing results about the university admission exams, other developments were taking place in the field of justice.
On the one hand, there was an attempt by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) to replace judges and prosecutors affiliated with the Ergenekon trial.
Meanwhile, an Ergenekon suspect, Arif Doğan, was released by court order for reasons of health while another convict for another crime, Güler Zere, despite the many health reports attesting that she is about to die, still languishes in prison.
Doğan is reportedly one of the founders of JİTEM, which allegedly carried out many extra-judicial killings and other illegal activities including heroin smuggling. Of course, like any inmate Doğan has the right to proper health treatment for his heart and for anxiety. And his health report indicates that it is impossible to cure him in prison.
But another citizen who is not the founder of JİTEM, Zere, whose report also indicates that it will be impossible to cure her even in the special wards in hospitals for inmates, is apparently not releasable.
So in short, the state is also not very successful in treating its citizens equally in the field of justice. In the end, we are subjects of a state which has deep troubles with two of its important duties, justice and education. Both of them need urgent reforms, but until they do, we will keep on having nightmares.
