Boris backs our Turkish campaign

Mayor of London backs Londra Gazete’s campaign to rescue Turkish as a GCSE and A level subject

Boris Johnson (far right) backed our campaign with the Conservative candidates for Edmonton, Gönül Daniels, and Nick de Bois, the Enfield North candidate

Boris Johnson said he his great-grandfather, an Istanbul education minister in 1919, introduced Latin and Ancient Greek classes in schools and that losing Turkish exams was “a real, real shame”.

Turkish will not be offered in English secondary schools from 2017 because of the OCR examination board’s decision to drop the subject because of low demand.

“My own view as a total believer in languages is that we should encourage it. I don’t want to see any languages die in our schools. I think it’s a real, real shame personally,” Mr Johnson said.

But he said the decision to drop Turkish exams was “up to the exam boards to decide” and stopped short of promising the Conservatives would instruct the OCR to reverse the decision, a pledge made by Labour last week.

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In a short interview with Londra, the Mayor of London spoke about his great-grandfather Ali Kemal Bey, who served as education and interior minister in the Ottoman government after the First World War.

The Mayor of London was in Enfield North to support the campaign of Nick de Bois, the Conservative candidate

He continued: “If we’re going to retain London’s global status we’ve also got to make sure that the diversity of London, the diverse communities of London retain their heritage, their understanding, their links with the countries from where they have come – like indeed my great-grandfather came from Turkey.

“He learned English – he went back to Turkey and was assassinated – but he made an effort, his children made an effort to learn English and here I am. I would dearly like to know more Turkish, All I can say is things like çok güzel and merhaba and teşekkür ederim.

“I seem to remember my great-grandfather reinstated the study of Latin and Greek in Istanbul back in the day there when he had the power to do that. That is not something I would necessarily contemplate but the study of languages is of vital intellectual importance.”

Mr Johnson was in Enfield to support the election campaign of Conservative candidate Nick de Bois, who secured a House of Commons debate on Turkish exams last month.

The Mayor praised Mr de Bois’s work: “He’s campaigned on knife crime very successfully and brought it down. He’s campaigned on transport and Enfield is getting the first extension of the Overground network coming into TfL. And he’s campaigning on languages in schools in this area and I think that’s totally right.”