Closing the schools will ever remain a black event in the history of our country
KARACHI: It is a widely accepted belief that to arrest the spread of terrorism, education must be provided to children worldwide. For this purpose, the international community spends billions of dollars each year. It really saddened me when I read a demand from the Turkish ambassador to shut down the Pak-Turk schools in Pakistan in the wake of the recent attempted military coup in the brotherly country. The Turkish government believes that the Pak-Turk Education Foundation should eliminate all of its educational activities because the foundation is owned by Fateullah Gulen’s Hizmet Movement and the schools produce Gulenists, who were behind the attempted military coup. They believe Gulen sympathasiers will be a serious threat to the elected government in Turkey. These are matters of high politics and time shall decide whether they are true or untrue in nature. However, it makes no sense at all as to why teachers and the taught should suffer when a coup happened in Turkey.
Education is considered the best weapon to cope with the challenges of terrorism. If our government closes schools, it will have taken steps to spoil the talent of our future leaders by snatching books away from their hands and provoking them to buy weapons. Moreover, it seems illogical to close educational institutions in Pakistan due to political upheavals in Turkey. Why should our students suffer because Erdogan’s government is at risk? We must not endorse any move that aims at turning our youth towards illiteracy because of Turkey or any other country of the world. I appeal to my government to ignore the Turkish demand and never make the unwise decision to close the Pak-Turk Education Foundation schools because many needy students are studying there. Closing the schools will ever remain a black event in the history of our country.
Ali Jamali
Published in The Express Tribune, July 29th, 2016.
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