Tatar calls for higher education chief to resign

Turkish Cypriot Leader Ersin Tatar on Wednesday called for the north’s higher education accreditation authority (Yodak)’s chairman Turgay Avci to resign.

Scandal has engulfed the north’s higher education sector in recent weeks, with allegations surfacing that fake diplomas were being handed out and that bribes were being offered and taken at the highest level.

Allegations have become criminal charges for some, too, including former ‘education minister’ Kemal Durust and his wife.

Avci himself was arrested alongside former Yodak board member Mehmet Hasguler on Friday with both accused of taking under-the-table payments while the now-infamous Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU)’s medicine school was applying for Yodak accreditation.

Tatar on Wednesday should resign “to enable a new structure to form in Yodak”, but said he had “taken into account the presumption of innocence while the judicial process continues.”

Avci and Hasguler both appeared in court for the second time on Tuesday, accused of extortion, accepting money in exchange for a failure to perform their public duty, receiving money in exchange for favour while in public office, and laundering the proceeds of a crime.

Police claimed in court that Avci had taken bribes amounting to $10,000 (€9,148), while Hasguler, previously believed to have taken $4,000 (€3,659) in bribes, is now accused of having taken double that amount.

Both were released on bails amounting to 50,000TL (€1,425) with two guarantors each ordered to sign bonds worth 1 million TL (€28,505). They have also been forbidden from leaving the north and must present themselves to the police once a week.

Speaking after proceedings, Avci said “we are happy, and our heads are held high.”

Hasguler, meanwhile, despite having received the same charges as Avci, seems to have garnered support among parts of the north’s media.

After he was released on bail, he was pictured smiling with Avrupa newspaper editor in chief Sener Levent and journalists’ trade union Basin-Sen leader Ali Kismir,

He also spoke after the end of court proceedings, immediately after saying he said the allegations “are not even worth talking about”.

He said he is “coming after” those who wish to “use us as their exit ticket from the cemetery of diplomas”, and accused pharmacists and doctors of “making selective accusations” given their role in a separate scandal which emerged last year.

He added that he had been a member of Yodak’s board since the KSTU was established and that he “knows very well what is happening.”

“We will continue our fight, we want our country to be a clean society,” he said.