Teachers and religious leaders battle tochange a culture that keeps an estimated 520,000 girls at home.
By Associated Press
Published September 29, 2005
VAN, Turkey - It's the second week of school, and Mehmet Sadik Altin, the local imam, charges up to a lopsided concrete home with a mud roof and demands to know why the five girls inside aren't in class.
"We don't have money for bread," Meryem Benek shouts at Altin, surrounded by three children wearing torn plastic shoes and worn-out, mud-caked sweaters. "How can I send my girls to school?"
After a half hour of arguing, a team including Altin, a school principal and several teachers persuades Benek that her daughters need an education. The illiterate woman clasps a pen and on a piece of paper draws the curved line that serves as her signature.
Hundreds of teachers are combing city slums and rural villages as part of a national campaign to educate an estimated 520,000 Turkish girls who don't go to school.
How well they succeed could hold far-reaching consequences: Ankara begins entry talks with the European Union on Monday. The focus will be on issues such as human rights, gender equality and Turkey's economy. Many Europeans are reluctant to admit such a huge and poor country.
In some poor provinces, officials estimate that at least half of girls do not go to school - despite the fact education is compulsory until the age of 14 in rigidly secular Turkey, a nation of some 70-million.
But the campaign has been largely successful: Some 120,000 girls have enrolled since the effort was launched two years ago.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife, Emine, have repeatedly spoken out in favor of the campaign. Education Minister Huseyin Celik, who is from Van, has told reporters how his brothers went to school but his sisters did not.
With World Bank help, Turkey is now offering the poorest parents $30 a month to help pay for school supplies if they send their girls to school and $21 to send their boys.
A key part of the campaign has been mobilizing imams like Altin to convince conservative Turks that Islam is not against educating girls.
Imam Zeki Tanriant, who accompanied Altin when he visited the Benek family, said Islam demands that girls be educated.
"Allah's first order to the Prophet Muhammad was "Read!"' he said. "Allah did not say "Read, boys!' or "Read, girls!"'
