Former Turkish Cypriot ‘education minister’ Kemal Durust was on Friday given bail ahead of his trial for his alleged part in the ongoing “fake diploma scandal”.

In court in Morphou on Friday, he was charged with preparing forged documents and inciting others to prepare forged documents.

According to newspaper Yeni Duzen, police representative Gultekin Sancar said Durust had “incited” the creation of forged documents at Morphou’s Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU) to grant a master’s degree in business management to Baris Sel, who went on to become Famagusta police chief and then be arrested himself for his part in the scandal.

Sancar added that Durust had given instructions to prepare a degree certificate on the basis of a transcript belonging to another person, which was also fake. Durust said he was unaware of the document’s content.

Durust’s latest hearing came after Serdal Gunduz, the KSTU’s secretary-general and 30-per-cent shareholder, had from prison handwritten a statement and submitted it to the police regarding Gunduz’s involvement in the case.

Gunduz had claimed in his statement that Durust and Sel had met regularly and that when Sel said he “urgently needed a degree”, Durust said, “let’s get him graduated and give him a degree – he is the police chief after all”.

He added that he had told Sel and Durust that degrees cannot be given out without students attending classes, but that Durust had insisted that Sel “be assisted”.

Durust was released on a 1 million TL (€25,275) bail, with two guarantors ordered to pay cash guarantees of 100,000TL (€2,528) each. He was also banned from leaving the north.

Gunduz and Sel’s cases have both been transferred to northern Nicosia’s high criminal court, with proceedings set to begin on March 18.

Last year, opposition political party CTP ‘MP’ Sami Ozuslu had laid the blame for the rapid and largely uncontrolled expansion of the number of universities in the north at Durust’s feet.

Ozuslu said he had requested information regarding the state of the north’s universities from the ‘education ministry’, and that the ‘ministry’ had said there are a total of 36 universities currently operating in the north.

He added that 28 of those universities have been opened since 2011, and that Kemal Durust signed off on the opening of 16 of them.

Ozuslu explained that the first university opened in the north was the Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta in 1979, followed by four others until 1997.

Those were the Girne American University in Kyrenia, the Near East University in northern Nicosia, the European University of Lefka, and the Cyprus International University in Mia Milia.

He said that there were five universities, and then in 2003 Turkey requested to open the Middle East Technical University campus, which brought the number to six.

He added, “no permissions were granted to open a new university until 2011, but then a real explosion happened.”