Only 24 of the 138 schools belonging to the national minorities in Turkey in the 1920s are left today. The Turkish “Hurriyet” periodical referred to the state of the schools belonging to the national minorities and note that many of them are under the threat of closure today. According to the periodical, many of the schools that survive only on donations will be closed if they do not have any other funding and have no “non-profit organization” status.
Representatives of national minorities have presented the challenges facing them in this field. Arsen Arşık, a member of the former founding council of the Armenian Dadian School, presenting the state of Armenian schools operating in Turkey, said: “There are about 60,000 Armenians in Turkey today. If at the end of the 1950s we had 25 schools and 9,000 pupils, today we have 16 schools and 3,000 pupils. Changes in the education sector in the country have also had a negative impact on our schools. The exams of Physics, Mathematics and some other subjects have been centralized and hence, depriving our students of the opportunity to pass these examinations in their native language”.Arsen Arşık added that the only funding for schools is donations that will almost that barely cover the costs.