The north’s higher education accreditation authority (Yodak)’s membership of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (Enqa) expired on Wednesday, with Enqa confirming that they had not yet received an application for renewal.
Yodak had been an affiliate member of Enqa for many years, with its chairman Aykut Hocanin having attended events organised by Enqa as recently as last month, but a representative of Enqa confirmed to the Cyprus Mail on Wednesday that Yodak’s membership had since elapsed.
The representative explained that organisations do not have to meet any specific criteria to be listed as affiliate members, other than stating the same “values” as Enqa, and confirmed that conversations were ongoing with various stakeholders with a view to moving forward in some way.
Affiliate membership, the representative said, can be renewed at any time, though Yodak is yet to apply to do so.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Republic of Cyprus’ Agency of Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education (Dipae) had written to Enqa, saying that Yodak’s membership had caused “Cyprus and higher education in Cyprus to be discredited”, given that universities in the north “bear the name of Cyprus and usurped the occupied territories”.
To this end, it made reference to “accusations of and arrests for corruption and the exploitation of students which saw the light of day”, as well as the north’s universities’ reported “relationship with human trafficking”
It added that Cyprus’ foreign ministry has “since day one” attempted to “highlight the illegal personality of Yodak”, but that Enqa’s response to the complaints has been “disappointing”.
Dipae had said Enqa had “decided not to renew the status” of Yodak as an affiliate, but Enqa denied this, saying the non-renewal was thus far a decision made by Yodak itself.
Even so, the non-renewal comes at the end of a difficult year for higher education in the north, with a scandal involving the alleged issuing of numerous fake degrees having rocked the north in the first half of the year.
Police investigations centred on Morphou’s Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU), with the university’s 30-per-cent shareholder and secretary-general Serdal Gunduz among those arrested.
Gunduz stands accused of preparing forged documents, putting them into circulation, and encouraging others to do the same.
He remains in custody to this day, having been ordered to remain behind bars for a further three months at his most recent court hearing on May 8, with the court in Morphou ruling that he was a flight risk as he holds residence permits in both Greece and Russia.
Meanwhile, former ‘education minister’ Kemal Durust was one of the many others arrested, having allegedly fraudulently obtained thousands of euros by sending fake invoices to the university in question.
Durust had been lambasted in ‘parliament’ by opposition party CTP ‘MP’ Sami Ozuslu for having signed off on the opening of a total of 16 universities during his three stints as ‘education minister’ between 2009 and 2016.
Other high-profile arrestees include former Yodak chairman Turgay Avci and board member Mehmet Hasguler, and Ersin Tatar’s bodyguard Serif Avcil.
Avci resigned from his Yodak post and Aykut Hocanin stepped up to replace him, but his previous employment before being hired as Yodak chairman was as rector of the north’s largest public university, the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) in Famagusta.
He had suddenly resigned from that post just minutes before a university administration meeting was due to take place last September as the university had been engulfed in a financial crisis that summer.
University staff had been calling on Hocanin to resign after some claimed they had been paid less than €540 per month due to cost-cutting measures while the university ran at a budget deficit of 410 million TL – €14.2 million at the time.
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