It’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, so should be in your bucket list if you like to travel. Visit Şirince, stay in Nişanyan Houses and see Math Village.
I have wrote a bit about the situation of Turkish education system here, in the form of three big consecutive comments. Here is a link for anybody interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15373653
[Edit: rereading this series of comments I linked above, I note some mistakes in there. E.g. the wealth tax was collected from Muslims too, albeit at a wildly lower rate compared to non-Muslims. Apart from this sort of details though, it should be fine and rather accurate. Any corrections are welcome!]
Basically the education has lately become an ideological battleground, and the 1980 coup has furnished the controls to the government to play with it at every level however it wants. This situation combined with an air of anti-intellectualism has caused the education and academical system to rot.
Hopefully the upcoming vote will bring a change for good. If there will be anyone ready to listen, I have tonnes of feedback ready to be given, and I believe, hopefully again, I'm far from alone in that.
I am from same generation with you but I think your assertions in your long comment very hand wavy and super simplified. Needless to say I disagree with many of them.
I have spent there 2 weeks in 2013. It was an amazing experience. What I liked the most was that it was more like a commune. Everybody helped with cleaning, doing the dishes and cooking. Everybody was eager to learn from each other, treated each other with great respect and there were no signs of age discrimination. Today, I am still in touch with people I met at the village. Some of them are way older and some of them are way younger than I am. I wish I could go back to see how it is now.
> He was sued that same year by the state for illegal construction and illegally creating an educational institution.
I congratulate Prof. Nesin for creating such a place. No one will remember the stupid bureaucrats who tried to obstruct this unique place but the village will remain.
I went to this village and was a student of Ali Nesin.
The village is intense and grad students go there to do full on set theory and group theory. Glad it is getting recognition.
There was an article in a French newspaper that details the real story about education changing in Turkey. The education system has moved from being mostly secular to being extremely orthodox islamic.
Newly brought in last year: jihad (and no, not "the peaceful kind"), and removal of evolution. New this year, the how righteous of the punishment of stoning is.
The illustration from that article was that several girls one day came home crying, panicked and scared from school. What had happened ? They had been shown a video of the stoning of a woman, and had to endure their teacher defending this as just for 30 minutes. Apparently this is now the new normal in Turkey.
As an American living in Turkey to produce software systems for the Education industry. It is in my honest opinion this is mostly all false. Evolution was not removed (if I'm correct it was shifted in which years it was taught, pushing it later in the primary education years). Jihadism is not on the agenda at all. But some south-eastern/eastern provinces do place Islam studies on the bill (in historical manners). It's much like how the US has a "Bible belt" in the south where creationism is taught along evolution. Turkey has a "Quran belt" in it's south-eastern border that also places more emphasis in religious teachings along side it's sciences. In the western portions this is essentially non-existent besides the historical context (Ottoman was Islamic after all)
I grew up with Aziz Nesin's humorous books and later read Ali Nesin's "who is afraid of maths?". They helped me immensely while searching for meaning in life. (An adolescent endeavor, as I later noticed)
What a family of geniuses. Turkey definitely doesn't deserve them.
I too look forward to spending some cozy times with maths when I am comfortable. However my bank account has been near zero for a decade, I must at a certain point admit I will not achieve this vision and get on with life. Not there yet!
this is until Sultan Erdogan closes it down. Probably you also get expelled if you don't believe in the Quran. Sad but true. Article tries hard to make Turkey appear like a good place to innovate and it's probably the worst oppression for academia in this century with a huge amount of professors in jail since 2016.
BS. Why do we chop time up in random 100 year periods? Oh because it helps us distance ourselves from the original fascism and it's Aryan bastard! But it doesn't work, it's recent even if you append an I to the XX. Turkey is in a moment of crisis. Hopefully we're near the end.
Also, this organisation is not a governmental one already. It is a mathematical rebellion. Ali Nesin is one of the most dissenting intellectuals.
The Mathematics Village is also well-known for hosting workshops and summer schools on advanced topics (graduate level and above) in mathematics. For instance, currently there is a summer school on diffeology, categories & toposes, and non-commutative geometry: https://plus.google.com/+UrsSchreiber/posts/Y3JCNohQJ3D
[+] [-] roadbeats|7 years ago|reply
Here is a few photos I shot that time;
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azer/16340854491/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azer/16155210870/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azer/16340854491/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azer/16156704877/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azer/16327089302/
Note that Şirince is near Ephesus:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azer/16150595997/
P.S Şirince wine is a scam. Mr. Nişanyan explains it in his book Aslanlı Yol.
[+] [-] Cenk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t0mislav|7 years ago|reply
(colleagues from Turkey office, Izmir, wanted us to show Ephesus etc)
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkya|7 years ago|reply
[Edit: rereading this series of comments I linked above, I note some mistakes in there. E.g. the wealth tax was collected from Muslims too, albeit at a wildly lower rate compared to non-Muslims. Apart from this sort of details though, it should be fine and rather accurate. Any corrections are welcome!]
Basically the education has lately become an ideological battleground, and the 1980 coup has furnished the controls to the government to play with it at every level however it wants. This situation combined with an air of anti-intellectualism has caused the education and academical system to rot.
Hopefully the upcoming vote will bring a change for good. If there will be anyone ready to listen, I have tonnes of feedback ready to be given, and I believe, hopefully again, I'm far from alone in that.
[+] [-] 101km|7 years ago|reply
I'm glad to see you have hope for a positive change. Can you reconcile that with the purges in the Turkish education system after the 2016 coup?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d%27état_att...
I'd love any reason to be optimistic here.
[+] [-] mda|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l5870uoo9y|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grangerize|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nyc111|7 years ago|reply
I congratulate Prof. Nesin for creating such a place. No one will remember the stupid bureaucrats who tried to obstruct this unique place but the village will remain.
[+] [-] darkhorn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3327|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robert_foss|7 years ago|reply
Turkey really is treading the fine line of facism.
[+] [-] candiodari|7 years ago|reply
Newly brought in last year: jihad (and no, not "the peaceful kind"), and removal of evolution. New this year, the how righteous of the punishment of stoning is.
The illustration from that article was that several girls one day came home crying, panicked and scared from school. What had happened ? They had been shown a video of the stoning of a woman, and had to endure their teacher defending this as just for 30 minutes. Apparently this is now the new normal in Turkey.
Here's some related articles:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/20/devout-generat...
https://www.politico.eu/article/erdogan-turkey-education-new...
[+] [-] baystep|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _r26q|7 years ago|reply
In fact, for me, the Turkish education system works better than the French education.
And Islam is not part of the education at school in Turkey.
School in Turkey is about actually learning and carring about each other.
(I am a Turkish-French. I live in both coutries.)
[+] [-] gkya|7 years ago|reply
Let's word it better: it's the normal a tirannical government is imposing and its unqualified conformist officers are implementing.
[+] [-] zabana|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nurettin|7 years ago|reply
What a family of geniuses. Turkey definitely doesn't deserve them.
[+] [-] _r5wf|7 years ago|reply
What an arrogant opinion.
[+] [-] tugberkk|7 years ago|reply
This is a very wrong thing to say. Ali took his education elsewhere, yes; but Aziz Nesin grew in that country.
[+] [-] mda|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aytekin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linkmotif|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haskellandchill|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arisAlexis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkya|7 years ago|reply
Also, this organisation is not a governmental one already. It is a mathematical rebellion. Ali Nesin is one of the most dissenting intellectuals.
[+] [-] IngoBlechschmid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] profalseidol|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madengr|7 years ago|reply