Former Turkish Cypriot ‘education minister’ Kemal Durust appeared in court on Monday, as he prepares to stand trial for his part in the “fake diploma scandal”.

He faces a litany of charges related to alleged document forgery and money laundering, with his trial set to begin on May 5.

At a previous hearing, 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.

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Meanwhile, 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 Durust’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”.

Gunduz has since been sentenced to 15 years in jail for his part in the “fake diploma scandal”.

Previously, opposition political party CTP representative 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 during his two most recent stints at the ‘ministry’.

Ozuslu explained that the first university to open in the north was the Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta in 1979, while four others then opened between then and 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.

After this, he said, the next university to open in the north was the Middle East Technical University’s Cyprus campus, in the village of Kapouti, near Morphou, which opened in 2003, bringing the number of universities in the north to six.

He said that after 2003, “no permissions were granted to open a new university until 2011, but then a real explosion happened”, with Durust’s second stint at the ‘education ministry’ having begun in 2011.

Of the 20 universities in the north signed off by people other than Durust, Ozuslu said seven were signed off by current ‘finance minister’ Ozdemir Berova when he was ‘education minister’ from 2016 to 2017.

Moving back to the matter of Kemal Durust, Ozsulu pointed out that it was Durust who signed off on the creation of the KSTU in 2016, during his third and final stint at the ‘ministry’.

“The university which was opened with his permission later became his own office,” he added.