This plan came a few days after Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, became the first Turkish minister to set foot in the Iraqi Kurds' semi-independent state.
The semi-independent state schools are now allowed to employ teachers who have not qualified as teachers, bringing them in to line with the situation in free schools and private schools.
In 1995, the mayor struck a deal with the Republican-controlled state legislature to wrest control of the schools away from the city's semi-independent school board and its impenetrable bureaucracy.