Saudi Arabia allows Turkish schools to reopen in the country
Turkish schools run by the Turkish Ministry of Education operating in Saudi Arabia will reopen in the coming months, according to news portal Diken. There is an agreement in principle between the parties to implement a measure that directly affects more than a thousand students in Riyadh and other parts of the country. As soon as the negotiations, which are at an advanced stage, come to fruition, student admissions will begin and private schools will resume their academic activities as normal.
The Turkish Education Ministry announced the reopening of the schools, known as Imam Hatip, weeks after Turkish Education Minister Mahmut Özer and his Saudi counterpart Hamad bin Mohammed Al-Sheikh met on the sidelines of an education summit in Paris at the end of June, according to a statement issued by the Turkish Education Ministry. In the French capital, they advanced the terms and conditions of the agreement, which ends a nearly two-year stalemate.
Turkish schools, which promote a conservative brand of Islam, were gradually closed from the 2020-2021 academic year as a result of the diplomatic rift between Ankara and Riyadh, which had been convulsive since the beginning of the century but was accentuated after the outbreak of the Arab Spring, on which the two countries adopted radically opposed positions. It was not until 2018, however, that the bridges were blown up with the murder of critical journalist Jamal Khassoghi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and the subsequent opening of legal proceedings to try the events on Turkish soil.
In retaliation, Riyadh decided, among a long list of precautionary measures, to close the dozens of educational establishments in the country that are subordinate to the Turkish government and that represent a bulwark of Ankara's foreign policy. For President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, education is a crucial tool of soft power, along with religion and Turkish television series, for gaining influence in other parts of the world. Also in the Gulf.
Months later, the thaw in the tense bilateral relations between Ankara and Riyadh was brought about by Turkey's strategic needs. Erdoğan launched the normalisation process at the beginning of the year, a campaign of rapprochement with Egypt and its Gulf rivals, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, aimed at calming the waters and fostering diplomatic, commercial and economic cooperation in a context in which the Eurasian nation faces a bleak outlook with inflation running rampant and the value of the lira at rock bottom.
The Turkish leader postponed, perhaps more out of necessity than conviction, his expansionist agenda in order to smooth things over with Riyadh. In 2017, Erdoğan attended the state funeral of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz as a sign of respect, but would not set foot in 'The Desert Kingdom' again until late April, when he made a three-day official visit to meet with the crown prince and 'de facto' ruler of the Wahhabi kingdom, Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS. He travelled back to Ankara two months later, in June, when they staged the final reunion.