Minister of Education Nimet Çubukçu opens the new educational year with a public lesson on discrimination.

"I'm here because I was lucky enough to avoid gender-based discrimination", she told pupils at Istanbul's İsmail Tarman Elementary School.

"There is countless number of girls in this country, who were not as lucky as I was."

Çubukçu noted that it's important to accept friends and neighbors with their differences and regard those differences as richness.

"The Turkish society has proved a precedent for thousands of years where people of different faiths and ways of life have lived side by side in harmony and peace."

For the first time this year, students received an elementary course to avoid discrimination racism and raise awareness on gender issues as well as cultural diversity.

Unions and experts welcomed the initiative, yet rest sceptic. Turkish national curricula, as well as text books remain filled with discriminatory remarks. Furthermore, compulsory courses on religion, which is focused mainly to the Sunni sect of Islam, remains an issue of controversy. (BÇ/AGÜ)

* In order to listen to Çubukçu's speech, please click on this link (in Turkish)