Turkey's 'Mathematics Village': Changing education one equation at a time | Hacker News Reader

Turkey's 'Mathematics Village': Changing education one equation at a time

middleeasteye.net

167 pointsmbaytas50 comments

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.

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.

Wow. I just realized I was there 2 years ago. Didn't know back then about this math thing.

(colleagues from Turkey office, Izmir, wanted us to show Ephesus etc)

Wow, really good photos. My family once visited close to there and I remember everyone telling us the wine is a scam too.

What's the issue with the wine? A cursory Google search did not turn up anything.

Just saw this. Mr. Nisanyan's book "Aslanli Yol" has a section claiming all the wine in Sirince is made outside Sirince, but they're just branded as Sirince wine for marketin purposes.

Looks very much like Umbria (Italy), where I grew up.

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.

Very informative, thanks.

Thank you for the linked post.

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.

Removing Gulen and the like from the education system was long overdue, as they are a political org with an agenda, butbthe purges went too extreme. I have heard stories where people cant find decent jobs because the read at a Gulen lycee, albeit unknowingly. Another which worked at one for one month as a teacher and didnt have any ties to the org itself, but still cant find a job because of that. We say in turkish: the wet was burnt because of the dry. A proper law-bound state would clear the innocent ones in a snap.

Muharrem Ince promises to execute every change necessary for such a state and to revitalise all the institutions. I believe him. I want to believe him. And I believe he will be elected. There is no other way out. Basically this is the most important election ever in the history of the Turkish Republic.

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.

Simplified yes. Wrong, I dont think so. That whole text is more than 15kb of narrative, and merits a detailed refutal, not a blunt dismissal.

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.

They sued him because he was critisizing Erdoğan.

Just google “Ali nesin Erdoğan” and you will see the opposite mostly. He doesn’t admire Erdoğan but he is liberal enough to analyse him fair.

"analyse him fair" is criticism (true for anyone, not just Erdoğan). But as I hear, Erdoğan doesn't tolerate fair analysis.

Because fair analysis means that he gets criticised !

Erdogan cant stand Real Analysis. Giggle

Fair analysis is no longer permitted in Turkey.

Their highest literacy rates are found in the prisons where they put the journalists and critics of the government and that's not a joke or something.

I don't know. I saw him in national TV channel two years ago (state owned one) giving a lecture to high school kids on quadratic equations. It was a superb lecture, and trust me he could not appear there if Erdoğan had a quarrel with him.

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.

I guess this village is only accessible to Mathematicians who weren't harassed or fired due to alleged ties to the Gulen movement.

Turkey really is treading the fine line of facism.

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.

Here's some related articles:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/20/devout-generat...

https://www.politico.eu/article/erdogan-turkey-education-new...

I’m sorry but this is not true. The depiction of Turkey by the french media is just false. This is NOT something normal.

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.)

What is not normal about the parent said ? That jihad is now part of the curriculum and evolution is not ? Not a lie, if you don't like french media you can check turkish sources [1]. Turkish academics agree that it is not a lie [2].

According to my turkish friends in the past the quality of education was quite good but has been steadily going down [5] thanks to the ruling party promoting religious schools for many years [3]. Islam _is_ part of education at school in Turkey [4].

[1] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-education-ministry-...

[2] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-academics-tell-mini...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/europe/turkeys-reli...

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/turkeys-ath...

[5] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkeys-education-problems-...

You lost all credibility when you brought up french media as a reliable source of infomation.

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)

> Apparently this is now the new normal in Turkey.

Let's word it better: it's the normal a tirannical government is imposing and its unqualified conformist officers are implementing.

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.

"Turkey definitely doesn't deserve them."

This is a very wrong thing to say. Ali took his education elsewhere, yes; but Aziz Nesin grew in that country.

And he succeeded as a human being despite that. Amazing feat.

Yes, great feat indeed. This country exactly deserves these kind of people in order to grow.

> What a family of geniuses. Turkey definitely doesn't deserve them.

What an arrogant opinion.

How is it related to arrogance?

"Turkey definitely doesn't deserve them." I literally rolled my eyes on this.

Such a beautiful school in such a beautiful location. I've been to Sirince a couple of times. It is famous for its wines.

Woah count me in, I'm there! Soon as I get rich :). I've been looking for this place.

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!

Hey you wanna Haskell and chill?

Not really anymore haha. It's more a state of mind. I wanna do proofs and chill these days.

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.

your comment is a general rant. you disagree that many academics are in jail or that erdogan is taking your country backwards to authoritarian state that obviously hinders innovation?

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

Very nice website relative to the websites of corporate owned news sites.

Reminds me of the Mentats in Dune.

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