In the Heart of Africa, A Meeting of Minds

Invited by the Foundation of Journalists and Writers, we are a group of scholars, columnists and journalists. "Turkish schools" in Africa? Well, it might sound surprising, but remember, we are all part of a global village now. Outside the airport, we are all welcomed by Mehmet Yavuzlar, a man of mild manners and a teacher of chemistry who has been the head of the Ömeriye Foundation, which oversees the Turkish schools' activities in Kenya. He is busy, as you can see from the very first moment. Calmly and in control of his subject, Yavuzlar tells us that things are indeed going very well there.

There are four schools in the country, he told us, two being in Nairobi and two others in Mombassa, by the coast. And the projects are still developing with the building of new schools all over the continent.

This is a growing vision, initiated by ideas of Fethullah Gülen, who leads a modernist Islamic community spread in Turkey with the view that Islam, as it developed in Anatolia, has a global aim. It is of crucial importance to this movement that every individual in the world must be fed with a decent dose of education and learn to develop themselves in the world. This vision must encompass, he seems to conclude, with non-discrimination of children -- no matter what race, creed or language, they all deserve this right to an education. Therefore you are seeing these schools now everywhere, and on all continents.

The total number of Turkish schools worldwide exceeds well over 500. Most of them are self-financing. Only the starters need the backing of sponsors. How it goes is like this: When the choice of location of a school is done and the matter of bureaucracy is concluded, the sponsors are usually chosen from a certain town in Turkey (or where the Turkish businessmen live abroad), and it is most often a group of financiers from the same town. That is, for example town X in country Y is "adopted" by sponsors from town Z from Turkey. Financial backing goes on until the school in question is able to take care of its economy.

One of them is the primary school in Nairobi, "the Light Academy." In this school, as in most others belonging to this movement, you meet a number of young and idealistic teachers. The pattern is same everywhere else in the world. Teachers from Turkey who are graduates of prominent universities such as Bosphorus, METU, etc., are teaching mandatory classes in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and computers as well as Turkish. Science classes are mainly taught in English. The rest of the lectures were attended by local teachers who are appointed by the Kenyan Education Ministry. The system is secular. Those 240 learners in primary and some 300 that we visited in a Turkish gymnasium in Nairobi were religiously mixed: Half of the primary school and one-third of the gymnasium students are Muslims. The early grades are gender-mixed, but the gym did exclude girls. The teachers explained that the danger of HIV is so great in Kenya that they have to follow authorities' recommendations.

We meet Joseph Bogonko and his wife, a middle-class couple whose children are "YATILI" in the school. "This school is among the top five that are successful in sending their students on to university," they told us. "We are happy. The kids are often so happy at school that they don't want to come to us on the weekends. The food is also great," they told us. Another parent, Ismail Ramadhan, told us that all his four sons had studied here and that one of them had gone on to attend a university in Istanbul. This education is not free. In Kenya, families have to pay around $2,000 per year. But the government has a plan to contribute some $200 per year to successful students.

Education is a great need in Africa, as much as hunger, poverty, employment. I remember a black African teacher who would tell us later in Johannesburg: "Here in Africa you are doomed to death unless you get an education." This strikes one strongly because you can see how tough life is for the families who have to raise kids, some under horrendous conditions. One in every 10 Kenyans is infected with HIV, and the average age is just around 50. The per capita income is $200, but the gap of income is huge. Only 10 percent of the population, swimming in wealth, swallows 40 percent of the national income, while the poorest 10 percent get only 2 percent. Survival is a real fight for the next generations. Primary education lasts eight years, but the fact that it is not yet obligatory makes one sad. There is still a long way to go.

Light Academy builds a large complex in Nairobi

Relations with the Kenyan authorities are fine, according to Tufan Aydin, headmaster of the schools in Nairobi. Initial suspicion was overcome, and when the authorities detected the non-discriminatory approach and the secular curriculum it was replaced by mutual trust. Now the Light Academy builds a large complex in the outskirts of Nairobi. When we visited the construction area, it was lunch time. Around a hundred workers were fed rice and vegetables. Mustafa Akçil, master constructor, had recently arrived from Antalya. He hoped that the first facilities of the complex would be opened in two or three months. When the entire school opens, it will serve around some 800 students, boys and girls, some in the dormitories, in primary schools and gymnasium.

This is the statement we read on a plate as we enter Horizon International High School, a modern and clean building, in the outskirts of Johannesburg. We are in South Africa, where conditions and living standards are relatively better than Kenya, although the need for education is equally strong. We go from classroom to classroom in the large school. In the early hours of the evening, we meet boys, at the age of 14-16, some doing homework, some busy with their PCs.

We meet the teachers, who ask us humbly what we think of the schools. Guests are keen on praising them. I tell them my early observations which will only be confirmed as we travel along other cities in South Africa: This commendable "charity" work, apart from bringing the positive elements of Turkish culture and sharing the universal knowledge of science for a better future for the children, is also extremely valuable for the teachers from Turkey, to absorb the values of other cultures and nations. By traveling, the teachers are also students of culture and civilization, as varied and diverse as they are. This makes these teachers invaluable assets, as people with knowledge when they return to their homeland, Turkey. Most of them seemed to agree, though some of them complained of "loneliness." It is natural: they are far, far away from their families.

There are many Turkish schools in South Africa and neighboring countries. Hasan Tarik Şen, the chairman of the Horizon Educational Trust ,whom we met in Johannesburg, informed us that there are now four primary schools combined with gymnasiums in South Africa, "combined" schools in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique, one in each. There are plans for schools in Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mauritius, he added. Some school constructions are apparently still under way.

Primary education for seven years is compulsory in South Africa. Tahsin Tümer is the headmaster of the schools in South Africa: "We educate a total of 1,400 learners now," he says. "Fifty-one of our teachers are from Turkey, 71 are from South Africa. Our relations with the local authorities are very good." The Turkish teachers live usually in rented flats, and their salary is around $1,300 in average. Around one-third of them are married with Turks.

As usual, Turkish teachers go to science classes and teach Turkish. The language for the other teachers is English. Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans are not taught, although some students speak them. (South Africa is a complex country: In a population of 45 millions, there are 11 "official" languages; majority blacks live together with the Indians and whites. All the monotheistic religions are represented, as well as several pantheistic ones. These are the realities the schools have to pay serious attention to.)

An unthinkable project 20 years ago

Whichever school you visit, you are faced with an interesting scene: There are always some black students speaking Turkish to you. Some of them do it fluently. They love to recite poetry, tell jokes. Most of them say they some day hope to study in universities in Turkey, as some already do. Khangelani Mhaleni, 17, has been to Turkey, and tells us lyrically his visits to Yalova and Istanbul. A teacher took him even to his native city, Diyarbakir. As they strolled in the streets, one curious street seller asked to the teacher, pointing out with his chin to the black Mhaleni, and asked: "Is this the new football player for Diyarbakirspor?"

We visited Star College, outside on the green slopes of Durban, a humid and hot coastal city. The school was composed of solid, strong makeshift houses, which had served as a missionary school before the Turkish foundation took over from a lonely nun in 1999. "Now we have around 200 students here. They have to pay $2,000 per year, and they can get a scholarship of $200," said the young headmaster, Faruk Türkmen, who also teaches mathematics there.

Ilhami Demirtaş, responsible for the Star International Primary and High School, welcomes us with some well-dressed pupils at the entrance of his school. We are in Cape Town. Demirtaş is a graduate in biology from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara. He has been here for many years developing the school, which is close to the city center. It is midday and the classes are filled with children. More than 250 students attend the school. Almost half of them are girls. The majority are colored and of Asian origin. The teaching language here is both English and Afrikaans. In South Africa, you need to be able to speak at least two of the 11 official languages to be able to pass the university exam.

This was a most interesting journey into a project which would have been totally unthinkable 20 years ago. When we met the authorities in these countries, they had a clearly positive response to Turkish schools' presence. One South African told me that "these schools pose a great model before many other Islamic schools in our country. Here you find solid belief in modern science, eagerness to share universal values, respect for the 'other,' peaceful gaze at different cultures. We need it. We need it badly in a world which now does not look positively at Islam. I think when we see the long term positive effects of these schools, we will feel happy here." (Yavuz Baydar)