5.6 Million Illiterates, More Than The Total Population of Denmark

Bianet: 4.7 Million Illiterate Women in Turkey
Burçin BELGE
25 August 2010, Wednesday 11:34

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According to data compiled by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) based on the 2008 Household Workforce Inquiry, a total of 5.647 million people older than 15 years are illiterate. There are 4.742 million women and 932,000 men who are not able to read or write. Thus, the percentage of illiterate women amounts to 84 percent within this group.

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The report was prepared by researchers Assoc. Prof. Gökçe Uysal Kolaşin and Duygu Güner from the Bahçeşehir University Economic and Social Research Centre (Istanbul).

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Gender discrimination persists in education

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- ... The disadvantages situation of women is not confined to a specific age group. 79 percent of all illiterate women are aged between 15 and 24 years. ...

- Illiteracy is a huge obstacle for the integration into social life. ...

- The number of illiterate women amounts to almost one tenth of the Turkish population. ...

- ... The vast majority of these women are being pushed out of economic life. Only a small minority is employed and 97 percent of these women work off the record.

- Most illiterate women cannot benefit from a stronger integration into economic life since they work as unpaid family workers.

- The situation of illiterate men looks better in comparison. Still, one third of them are self-employed and the remaining male illiterates are facing high rates of unemployment. (BB/VK)

For reference of comparison, in the third quarter of 2013, Denmark, had a population of 5,608,784. Thus the number of illiterates in Turkey is greater than the entire population of Denmark.

Here is the more detailed abstract by the Bahcesehir University Center for Economic and Social Research(Betam):
4 Million 742 Thousand Women Are Illiterate (PDF)

Related blog post:
Turks don't read: only 1 out of 10,000 are regular readers

Violent Nation: Almost Half Of Doctors & Hospital Staff Attacked By Patients' Families

Turks are massively violent even towards members of their own Islamic society whom they perceive as being there to help them. Just try to imagine how much quicker and even more prone to violence they are to those outside of their group, whom they do not consider as Turkish or Mahometan.

Hürriyet: Biggest hospital health threat: patient families

3/15/2011

Medicine is a dangerous profession in Turkey, where half of all doctors and more than a third of nurses working at polyclinics and emergency services say they have been exposed to physical and verbal abuse on the job. Patients’ families are often the perpetrators of violence, hospital personnel report in a survey, saying such incidents are on the rise, statements seemingly corroborated by a recent beating assault in Mardin and a stabbing case in Kars

When Erdal Aydoğan’s wife fell ill Sunday night, he took her to Kızıltepe State Hospital in Southeast Turkey’s Mardin province for treatment. But when he found out that treatment included a male nurse giving his wife an injection, Aydoğan reportedly exploded.

“How could a man give an injection to my wife,” Aydoğan yelled before allegedly beating and punching male nurse Cafer Cengiz, 25, in the hospital’s emergency services area. ...

Cengiz’s experience is not unusual in Turkey, where a recent poll by the Istanbul Medical Chamber showed that nearly half of all doctors working at polyclinics and emergency services in hospitals, and more than a third of nurses, are exposed to physical and verbal violence – often by family members of the patients.

Seventy-two percent of participants in the survey agreed with the statement, “Violent incidents have increased within the last year,” while 51 percent agreed that, “Violent incidents have gone up at the institution where I work.”

Another such incident occurred Saturday, when Bülent Öcal, a doctor at Kars State Hospital in Eastern Turkey, was stabbed in the hospital’s polyclinic by a patient and his two relatives for not taking good enough care of the patient, whose nose was bleeding.

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Medical staff working in emergency services reported the most mistreatment, the Istanbul Medical Chamber poll said. Overall, 45 percent of doctors, 35 percent of nurses, 11 percent of administrative clerks and 7 percent of security guards said they had been exposed to violence at work. Twenty-nine percent of all health employees said they encounter physical and verbal abuse almost every day.

Following such incidents, 40 percent inform the police and 33 percent file a case.

A separate poll conducted by the Isparta and Burdur Medical Chambers showed that 45 percent of health employees have been exposed to physical violence in the last year.

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The Lunatic Followers of the Kemalist State Religion in Photos

At a recent 2013 graduation at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey[1], 720 Atatürkist, fascist graduates, sending a message to the Islamist oriented AKP after their pathetic Gezi revolt, all put up portraits of Ataturk that covered their faces. The symbolism was obvious, they are an ultra-nationalist mob worshiping their state religion and not individuals. A photo:

Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol observed that in Turkey the most racist, intolerant group in his country are the university grads who receive the most indoctrination into the Turkish state ideology-religion known as Kemalism:

Hurriyet: Beware of 'educated' Turks

9/3/2010

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This week, Turkey’s Education Personnel Labor Union, or Eğitim Bir-Sen, revealed a survey that mapped out the political attitudes in Turkish society. ...

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The more interesting part of the survey was the political categories that people identified with. The most popular tags were “democrat” and “nationalist,” which were equally shared by 22 percent of the population. After that, 17 percent defined themselves as “Atatürkist” and 10 percent preferred to be called “Islamist.”

Interestingly, the “Atatürkists” turned out to be the least supportive of the reforms to broaden Kurdish rights. They, for example, gave the lowest support to the 24-hour official Kurdish-language television channel TRT 6 that the government opened two years ago.

Similarly, the “Atatürkists” outperformed every other political category, including the self-declared “Turkish nationalists,” in their opposition to “teaching of mother tongues in schools.” Only 38 percent of the “Atatürkists” supported this right, in contrast to 75 percent of the “leftists,” 70 percent of the “democrats” and 63 percent of the “Islamists.”

The “Atatürkists,” in other words, were the least tolerant group in Turkey when it comes to cultural diversity.

But this was a surprising result (at least for the uninitiated foreigner) because the “Atatürkists” were also the more educated part of society. The survey underlined this paradoxical relation between “the level of education” and “the support for the democratic opening” for Kurdish rights: “As the level of education falls, the number of those who see the democratic opening as a positive step increases. Conversely, as the level of education rises, the number of those who see the democratic opening as positive declines.”

As I said, this might be surprising to foreigners, particularly Westerners, who tend to presume that “education” and “liberal values” go hand in hand. ...

So, one wonders, why Turkey is so exceptional?

The answer might be in the education system. In the West, education is designed mainly to raise critical and democratic-minded individuals. But Turkish education, from primary school to universities (yes, even the universities), is designed to raise generations “loyal to the principles and revolutions of Atatürk.”

Unfortunately, those “principles and revolutions” don’t include concepts such as individual freedom, cultural diversity, and, alas, even democracy. (In case you haven’t noticed, Atatürk has a zillion sayings about nationalism, secularism or “republicanism,” but hardly anything on democracy.)

That’s why a mind shaped by the Turkish education system, unless tainted by some other factor, will be a staunch nationalist, secularist, and “republicanist” — but hardly a liberal or democrat.

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The education system is really the key. From age 7 to 18, a Turkish student hears the word “Kurdish” only once: When he learns about the “The Society for Kurdish Advancement,” as one of the “treacherous organizations” that arose in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. (The take-away message is that “Kurd” is something treacherous.)

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Furthermore, the same “educated” Turks also believe that their co-nationals who question such national myths are either paid agents of the “imperialists” who want to destroy Turkey or wild-eyed Islamists who yearn for “the darkness of the middle ages.”

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Again in Izmir in 2013, one of the strongholds of Kemalist fascists, a lunatic mob of Kemalists Turks wasted their time recreating a potrait of Ataturk[2] like the North Koreans of the Mideast they are:

Due to all the Kemalist brainwashing in Turkey, Kemalist Turks see the long-dead dictator and militarist, Ataturk, as an immortal father figure. Here are some photos of the North Koreans of the Mideast kissing the statue of the immortal father and seeing if his statue will whisper them advice[3]:

Finally from the 2007 Republic protests of the Kemalist fascists against the Islamic oriented AKP party, here are some North Koreans again showing they are not self regulating individuals but part of the homogeneous ultra-nationalist, Kemalist mob[4]:



[1.] Most of the photos in this blog post where gathered from the The World's Armed Forces Forum, Greece & Turkey subforum posted by North Koreanesque Turks themselves to actually gloat about their blind, slavish obedience to the symbol of a long-dead man. The forum is like a Wild West environment, but the Turks there are very open and proud of their national fascism, barbarism and atrocities so it is a good source on the North Korea of the Mideast. Instead of hiding or denying their crimes or dirty laundry they most often gloat over it!
This particular graduation is from this thread:
Greece & Turkey Forum: Ege University graduation July 16 2013

[2.] Greece & Turkey Forum Thread: This is why I love Izmir April 1 2013

[3.] Greece & Turkey Forum Thread: And they say Kemalists are like North Koreans, I've never seen a North Korean do this June 13 2013

[4.] The Pasha and the Gypsy Blog: The Second Anniversary of Disgust January 18, 2009

"Secular" Turkey: 28% of marriages involve child brides

Flying Broom(woman's activist organization in Turkey): Child brides in Turkey

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Flying Broom News Center

16/08/2011

"When my friends were going to school, I, as a little girl of 13 had been married with a man, a friend of my father, in his 30s. I was scared when he was at home. I could even not enter in his room. I'll never forgive my father," said an unnamed child bride from Van province, now in her 40s.

It is difficult to determine the exact number of child marriages in Turkey as many go unreported or are unofficial "imam" (religious) ceremonies. "This makes the situation more problematic as they are not registered officially, making it difficult to track them," attorney Vildan Yirmibesoglu told SETimes.

However, according to the Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies' data, the early marriage rate in Turkey -- defined as marriage at 17 years of age and younger in the 15-49 year-old age group -- is 28% on average. The number includes unofficial religious marriages and shows regional variation, with highs of near 41% in eastern and southeastern Turkey.

"When thinking of including women over 49 years of age it wouldn't be incorrect to say the numbers would be much higher," Dr. Ilknur Yuksel-Kaptanoglu of the Institute of Populations Studies told SETimes, adding that "Even though the numbers have been falling over the years, they are still high and continue to be a problem."

According to a recent report by parliament's Committee on the Equality of Opportunity for Women and Men, many families in eastern Turkey do not consider underage marriage a problem.

The Flying Broom Women's Communication and Research Foundation is one of the most influential civil society organizations campaigning against child marriage. They are active in 54 cities, meeting with child brides to give them a chance to tell their own stories.

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The consequences of early marriages can be significant. It often leads to children dropping out of school and perpetuates the poverty cycle, but according to Guner it also contributes to domestic violence, incestuous relationships, health problems, and even death.

Girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are four times more likely to die in childbirth than adult pregnancies. According to statistics based on Yirmibesoglu's recent case studies, a quarter of women suicides in Turkey are from the age range of 14-16.

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More info can found in the following PDF by the Flying Brides organization:
Flying News publication on ‘Early and Forced Marriage’

Turks don't read: only 1 out of 10,000 are regular readers

Zaman: Poor reading habits in Turkey due to exam-based education system

31 March 2013 /İPEK ÜZÜM, İSTANBUL 

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As Turkey marks the 49th Library Week across the country this week, some librarians have stated that the poor reading habits in Turkey are due to the exam-based education system in which the cognitive and intellectual development of children is being neglected.

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According to a study released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in January 2013, a smaller number of Turks read books regularly than people in European countries. The study states that in European countries 21 people out of 100 read books regularly, while in Turkey that same statistic is one person out of 10,000. Turkey ranks 86th in the world for the amount of time a country’s residents read, the study revealed. According to the study, Turks watch an average of six hours of TV a day and surf the Internet three hours a day but only dedicate six hours a year to reading a book. The UNESCO report also reveals that reading books is in 235th place on a list of things most valued in life by Turks.

Attributing the poor reading habits in Turkey to its education system, Turkish Librarians’ Association (TKD) Chairman Ali Fuat Kartal said during an interview with Sunday’s Zaman that Turkey has an exam-based system in which the students mainly only focus on preparing for the exams, adding that the students’ cognitive and intellectual development is neglected. “Another factor is that teachers at Turkish schools don’t read much. It is important for students to see their teachers reading, which might direct them to reading books. ...

‘Insufficient number of libraries’

Stating that the number of libraries is limited in Turkey, where the population is over 75 million, Kartal added that there are only 1,112 public libraries in the country, further stating: “The conditions of libraries are not very good as the books and other materials in the public libraries are not regularly updated. They are filled with outdated books. Libraries should be updated with newly published books at regular intervals to keep the interest of readers or visitors alive.”

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However, a source from the same AKP that uses its state influence to get corrupt media moguls to self-censor their reporters so they can win state contracts for their holding company and when that fails arrest or charge journalists with terrorism, invents some creatively optimist facts about Turkish reading habits:

At odds with the first interviewee and the UNESCO report, Turkish Publishers’ Association President Metin Celal told Sunday’s Zaman that Turkey’s reading habits are not so much low as exaggerated. Pointing to a study conducted by the Culture and Tourism Ministry in 2011, Celal stated: “According to the study, 7.2 books are read per person a year on average in Turkey, which is not that low compared to some other countries in the world. Turkey has higher rates than most of the countries in the world. Despite this, Turkey’s reading habit rates are not yet sufficient.”

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I will believe UNESCO and not the Turkish state's organs on this one.