Free school books for minority schools
Güncelleme Tarihi:
ANKARA - The Education Ministry will begin distributing textbooks in other languages free of charge to minority schools this academic year. The decision was made after an Armenian-origin citizen, Varujan Turaç, sent a petition to the presidency requesting that minority schools in the country be provided textbooks in languages other than Turkish free of charge. Minorities in Turkey are defined under the terms of the Lausanne Treaty.
Turaç had initially applied to Parliament seeking free textbooks for the Armenian community. In February 2008, he also sent a petition to the presidency that read: "Our state has been distributing free textbooks for our 15 million students. Due to the non-publication of Armenian textbooks for the Armenian student community of around 3,000, they have to use photocopies to study in Armenian. If our state wishes, it can fix this disgraceful situation. Please forward my letter to our president." The presidency forwarded the letter to the Education Ministry, which passed it to the publications wing of the ministry.
On Jan. 8, the ministry decided to distribute free textbooks in languages other than Turkish to minority schools for the upcoming academic year. It stated that the cost for the ministry would be 58,000 Turkish Liras.The issue was discussed at a meeting Monday between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and European Union ambassadors in Ankara. "We will start implementing the same process in minority schools that we do in other primary and secondary schools," Erdoğan said.