The government aims to assign pro-government school administrators and teachers to rooted high schools, which are known for bringing up secular and modern generations since the foundation of the Republic.
In January 2015, the AKP government had declared 44 rooted high schools as ‘project schools’, whose administrators would be directly assigned by the Minister of National Education. Before the beginning of the new academic year, teachers who had served for eight years in these schools were relocated, while their students protested these relocations in several campuses. The aim of the project is to replace the current teachers by those who are in line with the President Erdogan’s dream of raising ‘religious and vindictive generations’, which was expressed by the latter during a speech in 2012.
While the government is facing the resistance of the students, members of the local AKP organizations visit the school administrations and publish them on the social media to reinforce and vitalize the project. The administrations stay silent about these unlawful propagandist visits through which the AKP militants try to convince students.
Meanwhile, the high school students resist and organise against the interventions of the government. A leading high school organization, Solcu Liseliler (Leftist Lyceens), organizes meetings and demonstrations for solidarity with the relocated teachers. The students call for organisation of all the pupils from these ‘project schools’ and organise against the reactionary siege of the Islamist AKP government.
