Erdogan: "Education has the largest share of Turkey's budget"

The government places great emphasis on education, and devotes the largest share of the nation's budget to education, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday. Erdogan made the remarks at a school in the southern province of Gaziantep, at a ceremony marking the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year. Saying that over the last five years education's share of the budget rose from $7.5 billion to nearly $30 billion, and 123,000 new classrooms have been built, he added that today nearly all students in Turkey have broad-band Internet access and access to technology courses. Erdogan also again accused the Dogan Media Group of waging a smear campaign against the government by trying to link it with corruption. Urging the group to report the truth, he also charged that the group's newspapers distort the news. "The media group and its newspapers have acted like this to pressure the government to make decisions in their favor, but no longer," he added.