Turkish PM Erdoğan cannot run for president, claims MHP deputy.

Turkish PM Erdoğan cannot run for president, claims MHP deputy.(TZ).

Erdoğan cannot run for president, claims MHP deputyA senior member of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has claimed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cannot stand as a presidential nominee because he graduated from a higher educational institution where the duration of study was only three years, rather than having achieved the pre-requisite four years of university study.

The deputy leader of the MHP's parliamentary group Yusuf Halaçoğlu told Today's Zaman that Erdoğan is a graduate of the Sultanahmet Economic and Commercial Sciences Academy (İTİA), a higher education institution that offered three-years programs and which no longer exists.

“I have friends who graduated at the same time as Erdoğan,” he said. “At the time of his graduation, it was a three-year institution. Our laws make it clear that presidential nominees need to be graduates of four-year universities.

The school in Sultanahmet was later closed. In its place, Marmara University and its Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences was established. I do not know if Erdoğan enrolled with this faculty later and completed four years.

He needs to make an official statement on that. But if that hasn't happened, his graduation document cannot be considered equal to a diploma from a four-year institution, in which case Erdoğan cannot run for president.”

Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials whom we phoned to inquire about the prime minister's educational standing said they would return our call later;

The website says that Erdoğan graduated in 1981 from Marmara University's Faculty of Economic and Commercial Sciences, but Marmara University cites 1982 as its year of its establishment on its website. 

Furthermore, the university does not have a “Faculty of Economic and Commercial Sciences.” However, the university does have a Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences.

The İTİA, which was closed when Marmara University was founded, was established in 1959 under the Law on Academies. The İTİA itself offered four-year programs of study, but the Aksaray Commercial Vocational School -- from which Erdoğan graduated, according to sources -- is a three-year institution.Read the full story here.

From BBC: Brought up in an observant Muslim family, Erdoğan graduated from Kasımpaşa Piyale primary school in 1965 and from Istanbul Religious Vocational High School in 1973 İmam Hatip school.
He received his high school diploma from Eyüp High School. Erdoğan studied Business Administration at the Aksaray School of Economics and Commercial Sciences, now known as Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Obtaining a degree in management from Istanbul's Marmara University.