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Riot police detain around 100 of demonstrators at Ankara education protest

World News

20-12-2014 | 12:20

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Riot police detain around 100 of demonstrators at Ankara education protest

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Riot police rounded up around 100 teachers demonstrating in support of a secular education system in Turkish capital of Ankara on Saturday (December 20).

Around seven hundreds of teachers took to the streets to protest against President Tayyip Erdogan's plans to make lessons in Ottoman Turkish, the language of the old empire, mandatory in high schools.

Riot police used water cannon and smoke grenade to disperse the crowd.

Riot police charged with smoke grenade and water cannon at protesters who gathered in the city center to stage a protest against President Erdogan and the ruling AK Party government over the latest plans to make educational reforms which are seen by secular Turks as an intervention undermining the country's secular system.

Last week President Tayyip Erdogan said that Ottoman, an old form of Turkish using a version of Arabic script replaced by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with the Latin alphabet on foundation of the secular Republic in 1923, should be taught in schools to prevent younger generations losing touch with their cultural heritage.

Erdogan's remarks stirred fierce criticism as opponents accuse him of behaving like a modern-day sultan, his Islamist ideology and intolerance of dissent taking Turkey far from Ataturk's secular ideals.

REUTERS

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