“Education has always been at the top of our agenda”
Speaking at the opening ceremony of academic year 2024-2025, President Erdoğan said: “Since the day our nation entrusted us with the task of governing the country, we have placed education at the top of our agenda. We have designated the improvement of the Turkish education system at every stage from pre-school to higher education as our main priority.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of academic year 2024-2025 at Beştepe Nation’s Convention and Culture Center.
“The academy is not only a place for transferring knowledge, but also the platform for all the intellectual grounding a country needs. In addition, the academy is the lifeblood of the positive and social sciences that a country needs,” President Erdoğan said.
“Since the day our nation entrusted us with the task of governing the country, we have placed education at the top of our agenda. We have designated the improvement of the Turkish education system at every stage from pre-school to higher education as our main priority. We have decisively implemented a wide range of regulations that seem impossible when we look back today. The number of higher education institutions has increased to 208 today from 76 in 2002. During this period, the number of students increased from 2 million to over 7 million. We established a university in each province so that they would bring together the heritage of the city they were founded in with universal values and provide equal opportunities for our young people. Currently, we have universities in all 81 provinces,” President Erdoğan said.
“We increased the higher education budget from TL2.4 billion in 2002 to TL341 billion in 2024. With the expansion of our universities, the schooling rate has also increased. The net enrollment rate in higher education, which was 15 percent in 2003, reached 50 percent. While the net enrollment rate of women in higher education was 14 percent, today this rate has reached 51 percent. The number of academic staff, which was around 64 thousand when we took office, has increased to 185 thousand today. Thus, Türkiye ranked eighth among OECD countries in terms of the number of lecturers. The rate of female academic staff in our universities is one point above the OECD average with 46.5 percent,” President Erdoğan said.
“WESTERN GOVERNMENTS HAVE LOST THEIR CREDIBILITY FOR THE SAKE OF PROTECTING ISRAEL”
Stating that Türkiye has faced frequent criticism from Western countries, especially on freedom of thought and opinion, President Erdoğan said: “For years, they lectured us on democracy, they lectured our country on freedom in universities in many topics ranging from rector elections to other issues. However, we have all seen how those who lectured us from their high horses took a stance during the Gaza genocide. The Gaza genocide has once again shown that the Zionist lobby dominates the world's most prestigious universities. We have witnessed such shameful incidents that students who said 'there is genocide in Gaza' were subjected to police violence and dragged on the ground.”
“Rectors who allowed demonstrations for Palestine were forced to resign, lynched and interrogated in the US Congress. University students who participated in peaceful protests were blatantly threatened by saying 'you will not be able to find a job for the rest of your lives'. The slightest criticism or declaration of support for Palestine was not allowed. It has become undeniably clear that Zionist capital dominates the world's best universities under the name of endowment funds. In the Gaza genocide, Western governments have performed terribly, losing their credibility for the sake of protecting Israel,” President Erdoğan said.
Following the event, President Erdoğan visited the “Hagia Sophia Photographs” exhibition consisting of photographs taken by photographers İzzet Keribar and Mehmet Özçay after the reopening of the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque.
