The Student Oath that was mandatorily recited in primary schools at the beginning of every school day for 76 years was abolished in 2013. Then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reminded Turkey of the situation in Europe at the time that inspired the Oath: “During the 1930s, such practices such as Hitler’s and Stalin’s were common to shape society. You can’t see any of these practices in developed countries, which muster children to recite a text containing racist slogans.”

This oath, which reads: “I am a Turk, honest and hardworking. My principle is to protect the younger, to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress. My existence shall be dedicated to the Turkish existence,” was written in 1932 by then National Education Minister Resit Galip, who was referred to as a close friend by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Recited in schools as of 1933, the oath prescribed the model citizen of the Turkish Republic. With this prescription and other additional measures in the Republic of Turkey, which was established on the renunciation of a heritage, Turkey’s 1000 years of history and identity were downplayed by disregarding that the country is the remnant of a great empire that encompassed Kurds, Circassians, Abkhasians, Muslims and non-Muslims. Excluding all the other identities, only a constructed idea of “Turkishness” was recognized as part of the efforts to establish an ethnicity-based nation state.

Following the memorandum released in 1971 by the military, the guard of the country back then, two prayer-like phrases were added to the oath. “O Great Atatürk, who had created our life of today; on the path that you have paved, in the country that you established, I swear to walk incessantly with the purposes that you have set. How happy is the one who says “I am a Turk.”

During the term of the government that was founded after the post-modern military coup on February 28, 1997, it was ordered that the oath would be recited at the beginning of every school day instead of only the first day of the week. In fact, schoolchildren were not the only group forced to recite the oath, adults imprisoned during the military junta periods were also forced to recite it for numerous times until they screamed and cried. This was done in almost every prison, including the Diyarbakir and Mamak Prison – the latter being one where most of the prisoners supported Turkist ideology.

The recital was defended by contending that the oath strengthened the younger generations’ sense of belonging to Turkish citizenship on a constitutional ground and secured administrative stability, adding that objecting to the mandatory recital in schools is not based on any scientific ground. This is what the Council of State has said in a nutshell, who issued a verdict on the application filed by the Education and Science Workers’ Union (Eğitim-Sen) five years ago for the annulment of the provision that abolished the mandatory recital of the oath.

Following the State of Council’s verdict, Pandora’s box has been opened again. Everyone has voiced their own opinion on the Student Oath according to their political affiliations. As a requirement of his party’s historical mission, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chair Faik Oztrak said: “As the Council of State reminded us once again, our Student Oath, which is based on Atatürk nationalism, does neither exclude any ethnicity nor aim any polarization. The oath represents the ideals of the nation and the Republic within the country’s integrity while internalizing the notions of love and respect. It symbolizes the aim of development. If there is a legal order, then the oath will be recited in schools again.”

The Parliamentary Constitution Committee Chairman and former Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, on the other hand, responded by hinting at the tutelage regime of the old Turkey that used to be ruled by the military and the judiciary: “With the Student Oath verdict, the Council of State overstepped its limits of governing compliance with the laws, attempted to assume the position of the executive body and disregarded the discretionary power of the executive body. In brief, it avowedly violated the Constitution and the relevant law.”

Meanwhile, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli did not only side with the Council of State’s decision, but also targeted Bozdag in a way that evokes the 76 years of collective memory: “Mr. Bozdag can say that he is Kurdish and he is free to do so. There is no one attempting to silence him. So, he is entitled to evaluate the situation according to his own temper and disposition. The Turkish nation bestowed him a senior position. So, he cannot think of denigrating the Turkish nation.”

A journalist friend of mine once said: “Nationalism is anteroom to racism.” This disease was inflicted on our territory by the West in the guise of nationalism some 200 years ago and in the form of racism during the 1930s. The Republic of Turkey paid heavy costs for the efforts to build an ethnicity-based nation that ignores multiculturalism and diversity although it was the remnant of a grand empire.

The old Turkey was a period when the nation was reduced to only one ethnicity as prescribed in the Student Oath, multiculturalism was disregarded, and the ones not conforming to this model were not even considered proper citizens. Of course, the present situation of the country is not flawless, but the old Turkey is already left behind.

In today’s Turkey, in which 4 million Syrian refugees are hosted and more than 600 thousand Syrians are to receive education, this oath does not have any relevance or validity. In this sense, President Erdogan announced in a determined demeanor that he will not condone the practices reminiscent of the single-party period’s CHP: “Does the recital of a uniformist text by our children every morning have any sense? What is the point of criticizing our Constitution Committee Chairman through his ethnicity and disposition? You claim that you are not segregationist, but you are insulting and threatening the Constitution Committee Chairman who has been a parliamentary member and a minister. We are standing behind him.”

Recently, Turkey’s Council of State, which is the highest administrative court in Turkey, canceled the removal of the so-called Student Oath in Turkey’s schools. That is to say, the court reinstated the oath. Until 2013, reciting the Student Oath in the morning by students in schools was an obligatory act. Although such kind of a militarist-like scene occurred in Turkey, no political party attempted to remove this practice.

Nevertheless, during Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s third period as Prime Minister, the Student Oath was abolished on the basis that it was against the self-awareness and self-realization of students. As The New Turkey columnist Hazal Duran recently addressed in depth, Turkish children going to schools had to –and maybe once again will have to in the near future– proclaim the oath as followed:

“I am a Turk, honest, and hardworking. My principle is to protect the younger to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress.

O Great Atatürk! On the path that you have paved, I swear to walk incessantly toward the aims that you have set.

My existence shall be dedicated to the Turkish existence. How happy is the one who says “I am a Turk!”

Has the Council of State acted as an executive body and de facto enabled the re-introduction of the controversial Student Oath?

In my opinion, this recent development has to be analyzed by taking into account four main points:

First of all, the question arises as to whether the Council of State has a legal basis to decide on whether an executive act, namely the removal of the Student Oath by the Turkish government in 2013, can be canceled. By this, the court acted like an executive body and de facto enabled the re-introduction of the controversial oath. It done this by ignoring the government’s field of authority and responsibility.

As several members of the ruling AK Party and legal circles rightly underscored (*> ; **), the Council of State’s decision to rule out the current regulation is based on a rather ideological and non-constitutional nature. In addition, the Council of State does not have a legal base to impose executive decisions, and the decision made does not comply with an accurate legal method.

It’s interesting that the decision on Student Oath was made at a time when the conservative democrat AK Party and the nationalist MHP were on their way to continue their alliance for the local elections in 2019.

The second point that I want to emphasize is the fact that while some circles welcomed the decision made, some groups rejected it. It’s also interesting that the decision was made at a time when Turkey’s main conservative democrat party, the AK Party, and the nationalist MHP were on their way to continue their two-year lasting alliance, this time with regard to the local elections in 2019. However, as of Tuesday it became clear that this will not happen. Disagreement on the oath issue was probably an additional factor to this.

Conservative circles and even nationalists with a conservative background and critical stance towards Kemalism protested against reinstating the Student Oath.

While MHP welcomed the decision on Student Oath, the AK Party criticized it. In this sense, this and similar issues bear a continuing conflict potential regarding the future of the fragile “People’s Alliance.” In addition, and as predicted, secular-nationalist CHP circles also welcomed the decision. Conservative circles and even nationalists with a conservative background and critical stance towards Kemalism protested against reinstating the Student Oath. Besides these main circles, Kurdish nationalist and liberals were also against the decision made.

While Kurdish nationalists particularly elaborate the oath as exclusionary, liberals reject it due to its imposing character and nature against, above all, the freedom of opinion. “While the latter one can be debated, whether we like it or not, rejecting the “Turkishness” incapsulated in the constitution is a rejection of Turkey’s constitutional citizenship feature as a modern nation state. In a similar sense, Kemalist circles deny that the Turkish identity named in the oath is racist, which is actually true.

While Kurdish nationalists particularly elaborate the Student Oath as exclusionary, liberals reject it due to its imposing character against, above all, the freedom of opinion.

But the disturbing point in this issue is whether a daily proclamation of the oath, which resembles militarist ceremonies, has to be an obligation or necessity in the education of Turkish children. It’s also a false effort to equate the constitutional Turkishness with ethnic identities. But this interesting topic would go beyond the borders of this column and one would have to make additional comparisons with other democratic nation states such as Germany or France, where similar identities are used.

My third point about the Student Oath’s main controversial aspect has to be elaborated and addressed openly in a more critical way. We should be able to do this in the year of 2018. Unfortunately though, this is still – deliberately – disregarded by all major actors. Namely, the reference to a person-based imposed ideology. One might start to ask whether we know any other democratic countries in the world, which have similar constitutional and other ceremonial references to a similar person-based ideology.

The last and final point is about the western media’s disregard and ignorant bias in the past couple of days. While we are generally used to expecting many articles addressing and criticizing Turkey’s judicial system, there have been no critical pieces published that address the court’s anti-democratic decision. It seems that in cases when a decision made by the Erdogan administration is ruled out by a judicial body, those western media outlets stay silent.

No critical voice has questioned why the judiciary acts against the government, or why the Turkish judiciary still acts in an entrenched (Kemalist) ideological way. Thus, the question should be why these media outlets do not criticize this ideological and legally-baseless decision, while falsely associating every judicial decision in Turkey with the President himself. Nevertheless, people in Western countries and those interested in Turkish politics should take these ambivalent and contradictory approaches into account when analyzing Turkey. For this, it would be an advantage to know the country’s complicated dynamics.

A couple of days ago, the Council of State in Turkey made a controversial decision and canceled the removal of Student Oath in schools. Until 2013, reciting the Student Oath in schools was an obligation at the beginning of each school day. The reason behind its removal in schools was justified with it being against the self-awareness and self-realization of students by imposing specific values.

Each student had to proclaim the oath, whose 1997 version reads the following:

“I am a Turk, honest, and hardworking. My principle is to protect the younger to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress.

O Great Atatürk ! On the path that you have paved, I swear to walk incessantly toward the aims that you have set.

My existence shall be dedicated to the Turkish existence. How happy is the one who says “I am a Turk!”

After the decision made by the Council of State, the issue has been discussed through various dimensions. On the one side, there are supporters of the decision, believing that the Student Oath is necessary in order to safeguard nationalist and Republican values. Some circles view the decision of the Council of State as a revival of the Kemalist ideology in Turkey, while some others focus on how it provides nationalist sentiment among Turkish children. Members of these groups insist on the revival of the Student Oath although the judicial process has not yet ended.

On the other side, there are opponents of the decision, who believe that this will create deficiencies on the rational thinking capabilities of children, by forcing them to obey the rules and commit their “assigned duties.” Some in this group underline the deep-rooted effects of collectivism on their generation and the dilemma between their feelings and imposed ideas, which caused bigger troubles for them in the following years of their lives.

Women who I have spoken to harshly criticize the decision made: “Are we going to promote self-development and individuality or top-down values on children? Since the practices of the early Republican period forcefully focused on the understanding of top-down and unilateral values, this oath does not create individuals that are capable of internalizing rational decision-making in their lives. If the decision of the Council of the State is implemented, the following generations will also carry this burden.”

Some people in this circle are also uncomfortable with the nationalistic emphasis in the text. The oath was originally written in 1933, at a time when the nationalist tendencies were on the rise in Europe, as well as in Turkey. Some opponents pay attention to this fact and state that there is a necessity for a major revision in the nature of the text if the sides insist on its obligation. While the original text has been subject to major changes, these did not transform the substance and only covered the linguistic modifications of the text.

Opponents of the Student Oath are also worried about the reversal of further democratic gains, such as the removal of the headscarf ban in public spaces. The AK Party has taken significant steps towards democratization of Turkey in political, social, and economic areas. The removal of the Student Oath was one of the examples of these democratization efforts. The decision of the Council of State was perceived as taking a step back from these efforts and turning to the old habits where judicial power acted as the guard of the Kemalist regime and intervened into politics.

Even though the Council of State made a decision on the Student Oath, judicial processes have not yet ended. The Ministry of Education has appealed to the superior court and it will take some time for the final decision to be received. However, it seems that this issue will remain high on the political agenda in Turkey for a long time.