President Erdoğan speaks at Teachers' Day and appointment ceremony

Erdoğan is making significant remarks at the Teachers' Day and Appointment Ceremony.

Here are the highlights from President Erdoğan's remarks:

"I am experiencing the joy of coming together with you, our esteemed teachers, in our beloved Istanbul. First of all, I would like to celebrate the Teachers' Day that we will observe tomorrow, on behalf of myself and my nation. I remember martyr Şenay Aybüke Yalçın and our other heroic martyrs with mercy. I wish our retired teachers a healthy and long life. I thank all our teachers. Today, we are also experiencing another joy. We will all witness the appointment moments of our 20 thousand teacher candidates together.

In the words of the late Sezai Karakoç, a teacher who saves a person superficially and brings them to serenity is the carrier not only of knowledge but also of wisdom. Education is a process of giving our children an identity and establishing strong bonds with the past. In this respect, education is a journey of discovering our roots and the values inherited from our ancestors, as well as embracing these values.

It is wrong for such a vital issue for Turkey's future to be turned into a snack for ideological fights and daily political polemics. We sincerely hope that the opposition and the professional organizations they collaborate with will turn back from this mistake as soon as possible. We take care to keep the issue of education and training above politics. We will maintain this stance from now on as well.

We have achieved a great transformation in every field, from physical infrastructure to curriculum reforms. The number of classrooms, which was 367 thousand when we took office, has reached a total of 735 thousand today, including public and private ones. From where to where. In the last 20 years, we have built more classrooms than were built in 80 years. While developing the infrastructure of education so much, we certainly did not neglect our teachers, who are the pillars and carriers of education. We have made exactly 800 thousand teacher appointments.

The rise of a society is only possible with the value it places on the labor, knowledge, and dedication of the teacher. With this awareness, we are displaying a determined stance to secure the rights, reputation, and professional development of our teachers. By implementing the Teaching Profession Law, we have brought the teaching profession to a special status on a legal basis.

As of 2005, approximately 300 thousand of our teachers will obtain the title of expert and head teacher. We have introduced deterrent sanctions against crimes committed against education workers during or because of their duties. By removing the suspension of prison sentences, we have made the crime of intentional injury against our teachers a reason for arrest."