On the topic, In my point of view, these moves are just wasting government funding, even a corruption possibility. If you know about Deniz Feneri Lawsuit you can understand my doubts.
Without deep understanding of the upcoming results and project targets, these projects are only time and resource wasting. Also giving false hopes to parents about our education systems quality.
If, on the other hand, the students and parents expect to take this technology and do something with it, to change somehow the state of education, then it won't matter how poorly executed this first project is. Students will demand more and better access as time goes on.
I am an optimist. Recent reports on the success (or lack thereof) of the One Laptop Per Child program make me slightly more pessimistic, though...
Better funding for education and better life conditions for teachers. Putting science before religion. Going against memorization and teaching kids analytical thinking and social arts.
Of course academia is another place that must be revolutionized.
I don't get you. How does being interested in using technology in the classroom align with buying a load of tablets?
It seems that this same story is playing itself out in a number of areas. Turkey "gets it" in terms of science and technology investments, it just doesn't seem to know the best way to go about making those investments. Personally, I prefer this situation to the alternative: knowing exactly how and what to do, but not even bothering to keep a manned spaceflight capability or high-energy particle physics research facility funded.
As for what Turkey can do to get on the right track, I think the first thing that needs to happen is the expansion of homegrown technologies. It seems every user group or startup weekend type event I've seen advertised is almost exclusively sponsored and/or run by Microsoft. Turkey would do well to look at a country like Brazil that, while it suffered being behind the times for a while, is now a strong player in the technology sector because it focused on homegrown tech.