Female, male students living together is against our character: Turkish PM

ANKARA

Erdoğan condemns female and male students’ living under one roof. AA photo

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has condemned female and male students’ living under one roof, vowing to take measures against such instances.“This is against our conservative, democratic character,” Erdoğan said during a closed-door meeting Nov. 3 with his Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies at a key party meeting in Ankara’s Kızılcahamam district.“We witnessed this in the province of Denizli. The insufficiency of dormitories causes problems. Male and female university students are living in the same accommodation. This is not being checked,” he said.The prime minister added that his government had instructed the Denizli governor to "investigate" the matter, but did not clarify whether he meant to inspect private houses or collective student dormitories.However, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç has said the government does not have any plans in place for students currently sharing mixed houses.“The Credit and Dormitories Institution has built perfect dormitories throughout our government’s 10 years in power. But the number of dormitories is not sufficient. The prime minister has instructed [the institution] to increase the number of these dormitories. He said it would disturb the students if the protests in the streets entered the dormitories. We have not had any conversations about raiding private houses where students are residing. Private houses are not the area of our interest,” Arınç told reporters, according to daily Hürriyet.Last August, a provincial education director in Trabzon had caused public outrage after lamenting that female and male students were using the same sets of stairs on the way to their rooms.Meanwhile, in the same speech, PM Erdoğan also announced that the state would no longer be the operator of lottery games, and that all kinds of betting games would be privatized.“The era of betting with the state’s hand is coming to an end,” he said.Erdoğan said plans would be put in place to privatize both of Turkey’s state gaming authorities, Spor Toto and the National Lottery, as well as all minor betting games.After completing the preparations, the authorities will call investors and organize a tender, he added.As Turkey’s Privatization Authority has been speeding up the privatization process, many large Turkish business groups have already declared their intention to enter the tender for a 10-year license to operate the National Lottery.In 2012, the state earned 432.7 million liras from the cash allocated from the National Lottery Administration’s income, watering the mouths of many investors.