Turkey’s Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM) has invalidated the Test for Lawyers for Judge and Prosecutor Candidacy, held on May 6, over distrusts of cheating, in the latest of a series of scandals which have came out in several ÖSYM conducted tests.
The ÖSYM, which declared on Tuesday that the results had been invalidated, told a new examination would be held for the candidates. A total of 1,546 candidates took the test, with 271 of them passing the minimum for admittance. The results were declared on May 30.
The ÖSYM affirmation also recalled that there were rumours circulating in social media in the days after the examination, arrogating that the results gave the appearing that test-takers from certain segments of society were favored before or during the test. Social media users speculated that the questions were leaked to some people before the test. The ÖSYM noted that a commission to examine the papers had been set up following the controversy. It noted that though no concrete evidence could be found on the investigation, the ÖSYM decided to remodel the test on the principle that even the slightest doubt ought to be cleared up.
The Ankara Prosecutor’s Office has established an investigating into the fraud allegements, the TRT news station reported on Wednesday.
The cancelation comes after the successful test takers had already been questioned by the Justice Ministry for vacant positions in the judiciary.
The ÖSYM, explaining why it chose to invalidate the test results, told that a amazingly high number of test takers gave the wrong answer to some of the “critical/indicative” questions. The statement also said some test papers, belonging to individuals related to one another, were suspiciously similar. It told 4 couples had almost precisely the same answers for every question, with their scores being too high and actually close to one another. It also told there were no notes, or calculations or other written indication of a thinking process on the answer sheets of some of the candidates who accomplished the highest scores. There were also candidates who had perfect scores on the math section, though they appeared to have selected different answers from those they reached in accordancer with what they scrabbled on the answer sheet.
The ÖSYM has been hit by many scandals in the past year, making it one of the most raspingly criticised agencies in the country. In June, it invalidated another test, after a Russian test taker realized that 75 questions out of 100 on one of the tests for the medical doctoral degree equivalence that he took on May 29 were the same as in the previous test in 2010.
Earlier, there were cheating claims concerning the 2011 Transition to Higher Education Examination (YGS), in which a special code was arrogated to be hidden in answer sheets that yielded the correct answers to test-takers who were told how to read the algorithm. Shortly after the scandal, the ÖSYM once again came under fire for errors in 500 questionnaire booklets distributed during an examination required by most postgraduate programs in Turkish universities, the Selection Examination for Academic Personnel and Graduate Studies (ALES). The credibility of the institution was seriously shaken after it was discovered that the test results of hundreds of students who took the YGS were calculated incorrectly.
ÖSYM head Ali Demir has been harshly criticized for not resigning in spite of a large number of recent scandals.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said the source of the scandal was the government’s practice of only appointing its own people to important posts instead of choosing competent and qualified individuals, adding that in the past the ÖSYM was one of the most trusted agencies in the country.
CHP deputy Aylin Nazlıaka spoke about the scandal on Wednesday. “The first word to say when playing Taboo to describe words such as theft, scandal or secret code has become ÖSYM.” She said the ÖSYM is no longer a test center, but a center for organized exam corruption and called on Demir and others responsible to step down.
