Turk pupils test knowledge of EU

When four students from İzmir’s 60. Yıl High School arrived in Ankara on Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining. "Perhaps we can find some place to study," they told each other, not at all diverted by the charms of the capital.

Sound like a joke? Two boys and two girls, accompanied by their guide teacher and school principal, had come to Ankara determined to walk away the winners of the EU Quiz National Championship among high schools around Turkey.

And they did.

The EU Quiz, held throughout Turkey, involved more than 1,000 high schools in 16 cities of Turkey. In Mamak, Ankara and the central district of Van, students struggled to answer questions on European Union policy, cultural references, history and geography.

The EU Quiz is organized jointly by the Ministry of National Education, the Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey and the EU Information Network. The network consists of information offices in Adana, Antalya, Bursa, Denizli, Diyarbakır, Edirne, Gaziantep, Izmir, Kayseri, Konya, Mersin, Samsun, Şanlıurfa, Trabzon and Van, as well as information centers in Ankara and Istanbul.

The city champions, who had been training since May, started flocking to the capital since the weekend, each hoping that they would be the winners Ğ whose award is a trip to Brussels and Prague. Istanbul’s champion, Halkali Vocational and Anatolian Vocation High School, aware that Istanbul had won the first prize for the past two years, admitted that they trained furiously. Izmir’s 60. Yıl High School’s principal had made the trip to Ankara to "encourage" the students and, possibly, to ensure that they worked until the last minute. Ankara’s Çağrıbey High School had already declared on a TV program that they were confident of their victory because they were playing on home ground. On Monday afternoon, the first winners and losers were determined after two sets of semifinals, both carried out through an electronic voting system where the audience also got to vote.

Ambition

Kayseri and Mersin schools, equally ambitious, were delighted that they also made it to the finals. Students from Gaziantep, Van and Ankara, who received relatively low scores, were close to tears, and some were lamenting that "others got easier questions." "We had worked very hard," said Fatma Özgün, from the Ankara team. "But when we got several wrong consecutive answers, the team’s spirits were sunk."

The questions that the students replied to with ease may make even an EU expert hesitate before answering: "On Nov. 15, 2008, a German citizen of Turkish origin was elected the co-leader of the German party Alliance ’90/The Greens. What is the name of this person?" "The eight Oscar award-winning movie ’Slumdog Millionaire,’ shot in India, is supported by the MEDIA Programme. True or False?" "The originally Norwegian song called ’A Drinking Song’ was adapted to Turkish to promote the Turkish National Football Team. Which Norwegian group wrote this song?" "One of the EU’s achievements is its common currency, the euro. On Jan. 1, 1999, in how many countries was the euro introduced for commercial and financial transactions only?"

"I am very impressed by the students’ enthusiasm," said Marc Pierini, the head of the European Commission Delegation to Turkey as he and Education Minister Nimet Çubukçu handed out the awards - netbooks, cameras and the highly coveted trip to Brussels and Prague - to the students.

"Information and enthusiasm is what we need in the Turkish-EU accession process. The students have learned a lot about the European Union. I hope to see some of these students working for EU institutions in the future."