In a written statement to mark World Teachers’ Day, the DEM Party’s Education Policies Commission recalled that "in Turkey, teachers are forced to struggle against poverty, job insecurity, and political repression."
On the occasion of World Teachers’ Day, 5 October, the DEM Party called for the constitutional protection of the right to education in one’s mother tongue and an end to racist, assimilationist, and reactionary policies in education.
In a statement, the DEM Party’s Education Policies Commission said: "While teachers around the world are celebrated as representatives of science, labor, and enlightenment, in our country they are forced to struggle against poverty, job insecurity, and political repression."
The commission pointed out that teachers’ salaries remain below the poverty line and criticized the ongoing exploitation of teachers, students, and the nation’s future.
“The education system has long been under the siege of authoritarian and monolithic policies,” the statement said, emphasizing that instead of scientific and democratic education, political Islamist, racist, and assimilationist ideologies are being imposed.
The statement continued: "We consider it vital to discuss and develop policies aimed at building a secular social life based on equal citizenship. Organizing education as a rights-based system, with the right to mother-tongue education at its core, is one of our key priorities."
Calling for the replacement of a century-old, assimilationist, and exclusionary legal framework that denies diverse cultures and identities, the DEM Party urged the abolition of all laws that perpetuate discrimination. "Achieving peace is only possible by building a society where we can live together in harmony," the DEM Party said, adding that a new social order "requires the will to abandon all authoritarian and anti-democratic practices of the past."
The statement concluded: "All obstacles preventing different identities and cultures from living together as equal citizens must be removed. There is no other path to building a democratic society."
DEM Party listed some key demands:
"-The curriculum must be reorganized according to scientific, secular, democratic, and multilingual principles.
-The right to education in one’s mother tongue must be guaranteed by the constitution.
-Racist, assimilationist, and reactionary policies in education must end."
