President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
has instructed Turkey’s educational institutions to adopt a policy of
highlighting the contribution of Islam to global science and arts,
including the discovery of the American continent by Muslim sailors some 300 years before Columbus.
“I
have to be clear that there is an important responsibility falling on
the shoulders of our Education Ministry and YÖK [the Higher Education
Board]. An objective writing of history will show the contribution of
the East, the Middle East and Islam to the science and arts. As the
president of my country, I cannot accept that our civilization is
inferior to other civilizations,” Erdoğan said in his address to
students at the opening of a religious school in Ankara on Nov. 18.
