Kostas Karaiskos: George Papandreou strikes again with publicity stunts featuring Muslim minority

On Wednesday, June 10, the Movement for Change (KINAL) submitted an amendment to the bill of the Ministry of Education for the “School Upgrades” in Parliament, proposing doubling the number of children of the Muslim minority of Thrace entering Greek universities through quotas. That is, the percentage of supernumeraries should increase from 0.5% to 1% on the number of entrants per year.

The amendment cited the origins of the law during the tenure in power of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (KINAL’s precedent known as PASOK), which in 1995 instituted “positive discrimination” which opened the doors of Greek universities to minority children, and among the signatures (apart from those of minority MPs Ilhan Ahmed and Baran Burhan)was also that of George Papandreou, then Minister of Education. In reading the explanatory memorandum of the amendment, one can find no justification, except for the history of the law. Obviously because there is … no reason to adopt such a thing.

When this quota was instituted 25 years ago, there were reasons and there was a prospect.

At that time, very few children from the Muslim community chose public schools, so for the rest, reaching the threshold of Higher Education, it was almost impossible to pass exams in the Greek language. After all, Turkish universities have always been willing to receive live – and malleable – material from the Muslim community in Greek Thrace. Of course, this willingness of Ankara is exclusively for the period of studies, not for a permanent establishment that would undermine the “mortgage” of Ankara on the population of Greece.

The rationale for that legislation was that we were restoring an “injustice”: how can you ask children who have hardly been taught the official language of the state to compete with the rest? In fact, various rumors had circulated about the creation of public schools in the Thracian countryside, in order to align Muslim children towards public education, and the costly (more than 27,000,000 euros in total) Muslim Education Program (PEM) was launched to help minority society educationally and socially.

So that quota was put to a pilot test and we have to say that it really brought positive results in the region, especially with the additional osmosis of the two parallel societies that inhabit Thrace. The perspective was that in the relatively recent policy of “equality before the law and state” then educational inequalities would disappear over time and at some point religion would cease to be any sort of criterion (!) for admission to the University.

Extraordinary injustice

And what does the person who thought up that policy have to tell us today, and with him our compatriot MP Mr. Ilhan? That the doubling of the quota needs to be legislated! In fact, they declare themselves “proud of these initiatives that break the shell of social exclusion and invest in a future of equal opportunities for all our fellow citizens”! Begging one’s pardon, but if we are still talking about breaking the shell of social exclusion, the arbiters of power for so many years must feel not pride but only deep shame.

And calling “equal opportunities” the institutionalization of a blatant injustice to the majority of students far exceeds the well-known babble of politicos. In the intervening period, George Papandreou was minister or prime minister for 11 years, and Ilhan was a member of parliament for 8 years (passing through 5 different parties!), So obviously a share of their responsibility lies in the fact that they refer to the current situation with the same language we heard in 1995.

How much has the knowledge of Greek of minority students improved, and if the difference is small, what does this mean for the euros spent through the prominent and triumphant Muslim Education Program except that they were simply wasted? How many public education elementary schools have been established, and if this has not progressed, what are the successive Governments apologizing for? Did PASOK and the other parties demand educational equality, that is, the right of a villager from Filira or Kentavros to choose the normal primary school for his six-year-old child instead of the problematic minority institution?

Completely self-evident issues have now been subsumed by slogans and have “tired” the audience before they are even seriously claimed in practice!

What exactly did e.g. Mr. Ilhan do, as a local MP who is sweeping elected in Rodopi prefecture, to ever raise the issue of Greek language studies? Does he know from the children who are admitted to the Greek universities with significant language problems how they graduated and how many did so?

The answer to any educational problem of Muslim children cannot be another gratuitous legislation. It is to make an honest diagnosis and to adopt a consistent policy that will ultimately promote public education. It is rumored that Turkey, through its consular apparatus, is investing in a large school unit that will change the landscape in Xanthi, giving impetus to minority education and widening the gap between the ethnic communities living along frontier areas.