The dumbing down of Turkey

"And, Oh God, please protect us from the wickedness of the educated!"

That was how the imam intoned at the funeral for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's close friend Erol Olcak, his son Abdullah Olcak, and the photojournalist Mustafa Cambaz, who were killed by soldiers during the unsuccessful coup on July 15. 

Erol Olcak was an architect and the wizard behind the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) successful election campaigns. He had come out that night to confront those trying to topple the elected government. 
By all accounts, he was respected by everyone for his humanity, and was known to be and educated man. His funeral was tellingly held at the mosque on the grounds of Marmara University. 

And yet the Imam called on Allah for protection against the educated as the president, the speaker of parliament, and government ministers stood in religious procession behind him. No one found anything strange in his words.

Earlier in the year Bülent Arı - a "professor," of all things - from Istanbul's Sabahattin Zaim University came out during a TV interview with the following remark: "I get palpitations as the number of the educated increases. I trust the instincts of the ignorant and the uneducated in this country."

Professor Ramazan Evren, the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Sabahattin Zaim University, says on the university's web page that their mission is to educate a generation that combines the past with the future in all fields, ranging from the humanities and social sciences to engineering and the natural sciences and that can establish a balance between tradition and modernity.

Not surprisingly, "Professor" Ari had to resign after his remark.

It is a truism that its level of education...