When some Turks don’t even know where Cyprus is …

A reporter asks: “Visa requirements are lifted reciprocally with the Huns’ state. Would you consider going there for holidays?”

The citizens’ answers:

“Well that will be good; in fact we emigrated together with them from Central Asia.”

“I am from the Black Sea. I usually would rather go to the Black Sea.”

“No, I go to my uncle’s place on the seaside in France.”

“It is a nice country, of course I will go.”

“I would not prefer it when there are so many nice places in Turkey.”

The reporter asks: “Who wrote our national anthem?”

The citizens’ answers:

“Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic].”

“Sultan Mehmed the conqueror.”

The reporter asks: “What is the definition of the TBMM [Turkish parliament]?”

The citizens’ answers:

“Turkey’s commodity exchange…”

“Turkey’s office of…”

The reporter asks: “Where is Libya?”

The answers from citizens include: “Outside,” “Right across the Marmaris [Sea], “It is in northern Iraq,” “It is in Europe,” “It is on the Mediterranean continent…”

“Where is Japan?”

Pick the best answer you like:

“Hong Kong,” “Italy,” “Near France,” “Somewhere around Alaska,” “It is in North America,” “Neighboring America,” “Russia,” “Italy…” 

Are the questions difficult?

Let’s then ask a more simple question.

Let’s ask, “Where is Cyprus?” The answers:

“It is in the Black Sea,” “It is connected to the sea of Sicily,” “It is in the Aegean…”

“Where is Turkey?”

“I don’t follow…”

Thanks to street interviews you can find through search engines on the internet, you can learn that:

-Radiation is a contagious disease and passes from human to human.

-Cherry juice gives blood its color.

-The moon transmits broadcasting waves (as it is a satellite!).

You might think street interviews catch people when their memory is at its weakest or that particularly funny answers have been montaged.

But when you see those who participate in the race of making up an answer with self-confidence rather than avoiding giving an answer by saying “Thank you, I am in a hurry,” as some do, it is much better to say “this degree of ignorance can only be possible through education.”

A news article was published the other day in daily Haber Türk prepared by Bürde Özçakır and Derya Öztürk. It was about mistakes in text books the Education Ministry distributed free of charge.

In the books for history and physics classes in high school, which have been in use since 2011, you can see that children actually learn the leaning tower of Pisa is not in Italy, but rather in France. The Australian continent is being taught as Austria. President Turgut Özal, who died in 1993, received a delegation from Japan in 1997 when he was prime minister, according to one book.

I congratulate the Education Ministry and all others who have contributed to raising these generations and wish for the continuation of their success.

We should be proud of the fact that while trying to do some “social engineering over the new generations,” we have created a generation that thinks their teeth are a hearing organ!