News Center- Turkish Education Minister Ziya Selçuk made a speech during the meeting of the committee in the Turkish Parliament to investigate violence against women. The minister gave information about the works carried out by the Directorate General of Life Long Learning in Ministry of Education.

Minister Ziya Selçuk stated that they opened 48 courses on the prevention of violence against women as of May 2021, and that they reached a total of 520 course attendees, including 322 women and 198 men through these courses.

“32.3% of our employees working in our central organization are women, and 54.3% of our employees working in our provincial organization are women. 54.2% of our total employees are women. But with the management level, of course, we have a problem with the number. We are also aware that we have all kinds of duties to improve the number, and we need to work heartily on this. First of all, we have about 18 percent of female administrators in schools, but 60.8 percent of our teachers are women.”

Ziya Selçuk also shared the number of students, who changed their schools due to violence against them in schools. “We have students whose residences had to be temporarily changed and transferred to other schools under Law No. 6284. 10, 649 students were transferred to other schools between 2019 and 2020, 11, 118 students between 2020 and 2021.

After the speech of Ziya Selçuk, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Ankara MP Filiz Kerestecioğlu told him, “I heard respect, compassion, love, and tolerance your speech, yes, these are good things, but I didn’t hear anything about equality. How can violence against women in education be prevented with respect, love, and compassion, if the culture of equality is not developed? What do you think about this?”

Kerestecioğlu also asked several questions to Ziya Selçuk, “What kind of procedure does the Ministry of National Education follow in the school records of students who have a confidentiality and protection order under Law No. 6284? We have heard complaints about how children are not registered for school since their residential addresses are seen in their former province. Is it possible to change their schools to continue their education life?”

“What kind of measures have you taken?”

HDP Diyarbakır MP Semra Güzel asked the minister if students who had to be transferred due to violence against women received therapy. Republican People's Party (CHP) Bartın MP Aysu Bankoğlu mentioned the difficulties in accessing education during the pandemic and asked, “Have you carried out any research on girls? What is the rate of girls who cannot access education during the Covid-19 pandemic? Did you carry out any specific studies on this subject? What kind of measures did you take and what kind of works you carried out on this issue to eliminate it?

“It is a technical issue”

Ziya Selçuk answered the questions asked by MPs. He answered the question of Filiz Kerestecioğlu about “Not mentioning equality”, “Of course, it is remarkable but when it comes to root value, I think the word 'justice' is a much more inclusive word.

 Ziya Selçuk evaluated the transfer of students as a technical issue. “There was a question about the procedure of transfers. Surely, it is a technical issue.”