Turkish President Erdoğan warns of 'provocateurs in disguise of journalists, so-called jurists'
ANKARA
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has slammed whom he labelled as "provocateurs in disguise of journalists" and "so-called jurists" while condemning the State of Council's ruling on Turkey's controversial "Student Oath."
"I don't think that the State of Council's ruling on the Student Oath was good-intentioned. Our only oath is our national anthem," Erdoğan said at the Turkish Youth Summit in Istanbul on Nov. 3.
A chamber of the top administrative court ruled last month to bring back the national oath as mandatory for students to chant in schools, years after it was revoked by Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
The oath was adopted in the 1930s by Republican People's Party (CHP) governments which Erdoğan has linked to the initiative in the same period of switching the Arabic-language call of prayer into a Turkish one, in accordance with the nationalist-secularist policies of the time.
"Provocateurs in disguise of journalists have started to throw up their years long animosity and hate on television [after the ruling]. I even saw so-called jurists, who rent their black robes, repeating the oppression of reciting [Islamic] call to prayer in Turkish," Erdoğan said Nov. 3
"We are working with might and main to build our future on a stable foundation and to raise well-equipped youth," he added, stressing that Turkey aims to widen the imagination of the youth instead of enclosing them with bans.
"Our common responsibility is to prepare a ground where the youth will not fall into the swamp of terror, violence, drugs and nihilism," he said.
The president noted Turkey has increased the total number of youth centers to 286, which stood at nine in 2002, and also the number of sport facilities were increased from 1,575 to 3,567.
Erdoğan also said the government is rebuilding the historical Rami Artillery Quarters, built in the 1770s in Eyüp district on the European side of Istanbul, as Turkey's biggest library.
President Erdoğan criticizes Council of State for ‘not working in line with new executive system’
