Prior to December, not many Turks had ever heard of the National Education Council or its functions. Yet, the council held its 19th meeting Dec. 2-6 in Antalya and made the headlines of all Turkish newspapers. The first time the council made the news was the controversial opening speech President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave Dec. 2. Erdogan said, “Today, Turkish children know who Einstein is, but are clueless about Ibn Sina.” (Ibn Sina is a Muslim scholar from the 11th century.)

The council’s agenda was laden with rather unconventional topics such as segregating schools by gender, banning cocktail-mixing classes in tourism courses and introducing religious classes for kindergarten and the first three years of elementary school. The debates became so heated that on Dec. 4, Minister of Education Nabi Avci declared the council off-limits for the press, which raised further curiosity and tension.

However, the biggest surprise, which led to the strongest reactions, came Dec. 4 when the National Education Council decided to introduce mandatory Ottoman-language classes for all high school students. On the last day of its meeting, the council revised its decision, however, and made the Ottoman-language instruction an elective course. The final decision stated that it should only be mandatory for students at imam-hatip schools (religious educational institutions).

The majority of the Turkish public was caught off guard on the issue of Ottoman language instruction. However, it is not a new idea. In December 2012, Ozcan Yeniceri, a parliamentarian from the ultra-right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP) had proposed a bill to the Turkish parliament to introduce the Ottoman language as a compulsory component for secondary and high school students. Although it raised some debate at the time, the discussion was not as intense as this time — probably because that bill was proposed by a small opposition party. A Middle East analyst in Turkey told Al-Monitor, on condition of anonymity, “The new decision was definitely unexpected in a country where until a few years ago it was Harvard University that was sponsoring Ottoman-language courses.”