The north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel and Turkish Cypriot teachers engaged in a war of words on Wednesday over the matter of Teknofest, Turkey’s aerospace and technology festival, which is set to open its doors in the north for the first time on Thursday.
The Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ trade union (Ktoeos) had announced on Tuesday that they would not take part in the event, despite the fact that the north’s ‘education ministry’ had called for all schoolchildren to attend on Friday.
Ustel took umbrage to this, and the fact that some had described the festival as a “show”.
“Labelling such platforms as ‘shows’ is the product of a dark mentality and has no other meaning than putting a barrier in front of our youth. Standing against all kinds of initiatives and aiming to turn our children into introverted individuals who are closed to development goes against not only political responsibility but historical duty,” he said.
He added that education “cannot be a slave to ideological prejudices”.
“Education is a process which prepares young people for life and raises them as free individuals. The mentality which refuses to introduce our youth to science and technology today will cause our country to be disconnected from the world, to move away from production, and to regress tomorrow,” he said.
As such, he called on Turkish Cypriot youth to “walk towards knowledge and light, not towards darkness”, and said he “will not give any credence to any understanding which tries to block the youth’s path”.
He then added that he will “never step back from the fight for modernity and progress”.
“The future will rise with science and technology. We will never allow our children’s future to be shackled by ambitions which are indescribable or that we do not even want to think about,” he said.
Ktoeos leader Selma Eylem hit back soon after, stressing that teachers are not against science and progress, but against the ruling coalition and the Turkish government which has organised the festival.
“Let no one try to manipulate or divert the issue. Whoever wants to go to the ‘science’ festival of those who want to impose political Islam on the bodies of our girls can go,” she said, in reference to the north’s ruling coalition’s decision to legalise the wearing of hijabs by children at public schools.
“However, let no one expect us to remain silent when our children our used as a show, when our teachers who are protesting against the attacks on our education, our working conditions, our personal rights, our union, our children, and our society, and our teachers who are punished for fighting, who are subjected to oppression, and who even today are threatened for exercising their right to protest, are tried to be shoehorned into complicity in it!”
Teknofest is being held at the north’s Ercan (Tymbou) airport between Thursday and Sunday, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set to be among the attendees.
He will be in Cyprus on Saturday to open Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar’s new official residence in Ayios Dhometios.
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