There's Kent, There's Marlboro - There's Medicine, There's Pharmacy

A news report is circulating,

In a university around Denizli, some officials allegedly enrolled foreign students with low exam scores into the medical school in exchange for bribes.

According to the report, things got complicated when a student who paid the bribe but couldn't get enrolled in the faculty—and couldn't get their money back—went to court.

Lord, please keep my mind sound.

What have the universities come to?

While we, as academics, couldn't even enter the campuses of many universities, including our former one where we worked for years, people have been entering medical school with photoshopped fake diplomas and exam scores, even without being literate in their own native language.

Meanwhile, our own students are being worn out in prep schools and private tutoring sessions, suppressing their childhood feelings and resetting their biological clocks just to get into faculties like medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy.

Upon hearing this news, an incident I experienced 5-6 years ago immediately came to mind.

I, too, had my share of those who took refuge in our country after the Syrian war. A Syrian student arrived. 

He claims to be a Civil Engineer. 

The institute had registered him based on his declaration.

For someone who doesn't even have a passport to possess a diploma is already contrary to the natural flow of life. 

Since his name was in the system, I didn't say much either.

And I couldn't have said much anyway.

At worst, I would have given him a zero and sent him packing. 

But I didn't.

He doesn't know Turkish.

I was curious. 

I tried to get to know the student using Google Translate.

Since I also went to America to study barefoot at the age of 22, I likened it a bit to my own refugee experience. 

Even though I went through legal channels with a student visa, there is still a sense of being a refugee.

Damn poverty.

That's why I treated the poor border-crosser warmly.

He had paid 3-4 thousand dollars to a network and fled to Turkey with his family. 

He had somehow found his way to Eskişehir.

"What do you do for a living?" I asked.

He said he was working as a laborer on construction sites.

He comes to class every week.

His Turkish is improving day by day.

They learn the foreign language that we, for some reason, cannot seem to master, in an instant.

He also had a new baby in the meantime.

"I will make this one a Turk, professor." he says.

Classic immigrant reflexes, the trick used to hold onto the place one has arrived at is always the same.

And it's not that it doesn't work.

Even in United Nations laws, there is the right to claim rights in the land where you were born, regardless of your origin. 

And then, let citizenship and basic rights follow for their mother and father.

The student-teacher relationship between us grew closer due to my curiosity and, to some extent, the influence of my American adventure.

“Recite an adhan” I said.

His voice was very good.

He recited so beautifully that it made me want to pray.

And then "Ayat al-Kursi" I told him to recite,

Seeing him say 'Bismillah' and recite with such reverence, I immediately called the neighborhood imam.

I said, 'Teacher, I have a student; let him come and shadow you, lead funeral prayers, and recite the call to prayer.'

He said, 'Bless him, let him come.' he said.

When he came to class the following week, he said he had quit manual labor and was now attending funerals and the subsequent ceremonies.

He said he was even going to the 7th, 40th, 52nd, and 152nd-day commemorations, as well as the mevlut prayers.

“I was making 40 liras a day from manual labor, now I make 400 liras a day from funeral work,” he said.

And in just 2-3 hours, at that.

Anyway, years passed,

and he learned Turkish very well.

He was only able to finish his master's degree 4-5 years later. 

He became the export director for the Saudi Arabia and Gulf region at a sanitary ware company in the organized industrial zone. He had become.

He called me the other day.

"Professor, I've started an educational consulting firm, and I'd like to come see you," he said.

"What's up, what do you want from me?" I asked.

"Professor, we must have a tea," he said.

Fine, let's have one, I said. 

"Don't come to the campus, let's meet in the city center this evening," I said.

We met.

After chatting for a bit, he said, professor, there is a lot of demand;

"There is demand from foreign students, especially Iranian and Arab students, for medical, dental, and pharmacy faculties," he said.

"Well, what about it?" I asked.

"Professor, can you help me?" he asked.

"What can I do? 

Isn't there an exam for this?" I asked.

"No, professor, universities decide for themselves which students to admit." When he said, "We pay 20-30 thousand dollars to some people at the university,"

"That's impossible, such things don't happen in Turkey. 

Our children and their families spend everything they have for medical school, and it still doesn't work out," I said.

As he mumbled a bit more, I realized that these immigrants had established quite a network.

Like the Italian-Sicilian mafia in 1930s New York.

They are living on a different frequency.

To tell you the truth, I still didn't believe it.

I told him to get lost and sent him on his way.

But when I remembered that an Iranian student of mine had said similar things in the past, I couldn't help but wonder.

The network scheme that my student, who had crossed the border illegally, insisted on—and which I had dismissed as impossible—turned out to be true after all.

At least, that's what the TV news says.

Some universities, including well-established ones, have gotten involved in this business in exchange for kickbacks.

But the Rectors were supposedly completely unaware.