"Priest Schools"

My eldest son, Arhan, is studying Labor Economics at Marmara University. At the same time, he is also studying Management Information Systems at Istanbul University as part of a second university program.

I want him to work in the Foreign Service.

That is why he is currently traveling and working in America, improving his English.

He had also been to Germany. He will go again to learn German. And then a master's degree.

Let's see if he can get into the Foreign Service.

I have been in academia for years.

Maybe I can even find some pull through the students I have mentored.

If we count my own student years, it has been 35 years; I have thousands of students.

It is frustrating to write this down.

Exactly 35 years.

Yet, I haven't even started living yet.

We have only just completed the duties imposed by the public.

We were circumcised, learned to read and write, learned the Subhaneke prayer, went to the military, got married, and raised children.

The dates go back and back, they never end.

But that is not our topic.

Over these years, I have worked with very good professors.

The number of fools was not small, but the number of idiots was not high either.

The vast majority of the professors I knew were special people.

They were high-level in terms of both ethics and character.

As for their knowledge, there is nothing to say.

Taking those whose numbers do not exceed the fingers of two hands as a reference and making generalizations will not lead us to the right conclusion.

Among these names, there are a few very, very special ones; their place is different.

Prof. Dr. Ergun Türkcan is one of the most valuable among them.

The legendary professor of Mülkiye.

The professor whom his friends addressed as "PROF" even when he was just an assistant.

One of the books he wrote has very prestigious awards, including those from TÜBA and the Sedat Simavi Social Sciences field.

He also has much more valuable books that did not receive awards. His writings are also deep enough not to be underestimated; mashallah, they are almost like those of old continental European professors, sometimes starting from prehistory.

With this capacity, he is a mind that should have been alongside the Prime Minister—though that position no longer exists—or the Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry—a position that also no longer exists—rather than just at the university.

I met him later, when I started at Eskişehir Anadolu University.

I had the opportunity to get to know him closely because he is the father of Archaeology Professor Ali Umut, with whom I started working 25 years ago, with whom I was a housemate for years, and who is still a close friend of mine.

It has been a great gain for me, of course.

I haven't met anyone better so far.

It might be my own shortcoming, of course, otherwise there must be.

It is not easy to understand how Turkey raised such a professor in the poverty of the Cold War.

Due to his father's duty as a General, he traveled all over Anatolia and studied in state schools.

Although his father was an officer of the Republic and eventually a General, and naturally not a religious zealot, he ignored the suggestions made to him and said, "I will not send my child to a priest school, mind your own business," and never wavered from the state high school.

Well, since Ergun Hoca could not go to a priest school, the Foreign Service, which he would understand later, also became a dream.

Ergun Hoca is of the second generation raised by the first generation of the Modern Republic of Turkey.

He is currently telling his memoirs on an important YouTube channel.

I strongly urge you to listen.

He explains the history of the Republic, the difficulties in modernization, and daily relationships in a very detailed and clear way through the events he witnessed and his memories.

Once, I also asked Ergun Hoca why he didn't enter the Foreign Ministry and became a professor at Mülkiye instead.

"It was already decided who would go there," he had said.

He said that those who knew good languages and were members of certain structures went there.

Looking at the stupid and foolish statements made by some retired high-level Foreign Ministry officials in the recent period, I understand better why Ergun Hoca and his likes were kept away from the Foreign Service for years.

Arhan is also familiar with Ergun Hoca's corpus, at least from the library at home, even if he hasn't read it yet.

If Arhan reads this corpus and his luck holds, maybe they will take him into the Foreign Service—where Ergun Hoca was not taken—without him having to go to a "Priest School."