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Turkey: Putting Education First
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 In 1998, Turkey embarked on a program of poverty reduction on an epic scale. Virtually overnight, it extended compulsory primary school education from five years to eight. The program cost an average of $3 billion a year. The World Bank chipped in with two phases of $300 million to finance different aspects of the reform where it felt its involvement would make a difference. However, it is a much smaller sum, less than $10 a month that has made all the difference to a schoolgirl Askin Yavuz in the southeast of Turkey. | |
“There are few cases...that can compare with these initial achievements.”
--Ilhan Dulger |  | | In 1998, the Turkish government took what has been called a “great leap”—raising the number of compulsory years of education from five to eight. Since then, more than 1 million more children have started going to school than in the past. The cost has been enormous—more than $3 billion a year. The World Bank has been helping the government meet the funding challenge. But there have been other, more difficult, challenges, such as an entrenched bias against giving girls an education. Of the 10 million children estimated as not attending school, 60 percent are girls. Teachers like Sait Çepik, of the Topraktas village primary school, are helping change attitudes. In his village, he went door to door with two women teachers, explaining that education was compulsory and free. |
 | “What sin have we girls committed? Is it a crime to go to school?”
--Aşkin Yavuz | | For many Turkish girls, the chance for an education is a distant dream. Faced with a lack of funds and a traditional resistance to educating girls, many Turkish families give the first preference at schooling to their sons. For 13-year-old Aşkin Yavuz, the thought of not going to school was too much. She wrote her principal, threatening to take her life unless she was allowed to go to school. “What sin have we girls committed?” she asked in her letter. “Is it a crime to go to school?” Aşkin’s principal pleaded with her family, and the girl was allowed to resume her education. Aşkin’s mother agreed that keeping her home would have been a form of imprisonment. “They can’t even do the shopping. That’s just the way things are,” her mother says. |
“You never can tell. Some of them will make it.”
--Oya Sevinç |  | | Fourteen-year-old Nurhan wants to be a judge. Her friend Hülya wants to become a nurse. Their dreams are part of a transformation that is taking hold in Turkey as a major government push to get more girls into school begins to gain traction. While many girls are still being kept home from school because of traditions that favor boys, others are riding this new wave of hope as far as they can. At school they get books, stationary, a uniform, and access to social and health services, as well as a chance to fulfill their dreams. “You never can tell,” says school principal Oya Sevinç. “Some of them will make it.” |
 | “Sanctions don’t work; the real job is to convince people.”
--Salih Çelik | | Asuma Kaçan has 11 children and lives next to the school in the village of Gümmetaş. She has no qualms about sending her 13-year-old daughter the short distance to the school and is happy for her “to be whatever she wants, to do whatever she can.” The Kaçan family reflects the seismic shift in thinking on the value of girls’ education that is taking place in Turkey. Kaçan’s oldest daughter, 22, was not so lucky. Even with a school in her backyard, she never learned to write. |
Updated May, 2004 |
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