ISTANBUL – For several weeks – rain, sun or even snow – a rebellion is taking place in one of the most sacred establishments of the Turkish academy: the campus of the University of Bogazici, in Istanbul.
Every day, faculty members stand on the main lawn in a quiet and socially distant protest, with their backs to the dean’s office, which they are opposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Traditionally, university academics elect the dean, who controls much of university life, from their own ranks. By naming someone outside his own preference, Erdogan started a battle for control of one of Turkey’s institutional jewels.
The University of Bogazici is one of the best universities in Turkey, with a surprisingly beautiful campus, situated above a battlemented fortress on the banks of the Bosphorus. Formerly part of Robert College, founded by the United States, opened in 1863, it is famous for its liberal arts culture of western tendency.
As such, he has long been the target of Erdogan and his religiously conservative supporters, who not only covet his prestige, but also deplore his liberal attitudes.
The appointment of Melih Bulu, a businessman known for his ties to the Erdogan Justice and Development Party, or AK Party – he was an unsuccessful electoral candidate for the party for several years – was seen as another step Erdogan took to extend its influence on all aspects of Turkish social and cultural life.
Mr. Erdogan has amassed broad powers since a failed coup in 2016. Under a state of emergency, he ordered widespread repression against his opponents, including many who had no connection to the coup plan, such as journalists, politicians and rights activists. humans.
In the months before the coup, his target had been the academic world. Thousands of academics were expelled from their jobs for signing a petition calling for peace with Kurdish militants in early 2016. Then, under a presidential decree later that year, Erdogan claimed the right to appoint university presidents.
The University of Bogazici was spared the worst of the purges, but students and teachers said they always knew that a battle was coming. They were forced to accept a pledge candidate for president four years ago, and several students who protested Turkey’s intervention in Syria were prosecuted.
Mr. Erdogan appointed Mr. Bulu on January 1. Within days, hundreds of students attended the protest, some clashing with the police, who closed the university’s main entrance to the campus, and more fighting with plainclothes police officers on campus.
At least 30 students were arrested in police raids on their homes after the first protests and in support of demonstrations in other cities. Several students have reported complaints about being subjected to street magazines. In response, the students turned to other forms of protest, creating art exhibitions, making cartoons and composing and playing music around campus.
Tension increased dramatically after government officials denounced artwork by LGBTQ protesters and the police arrested four students and confiscated pride flags.
Protesters asked unions and political parties to join the mass protests on Monday and the police came out forcefully, closing the main entrance to the campus and arresting dozens of students as they invaded the campus and sent them home.
Bogazici’s students insisted that they will maintain a continuing protest until Bulu’s appointment is withdrawn or he resigns.
“We don’t want an appointed rector,” said Ardis Canturk, 23, a student of construction engineering, who is among the participants in the daily protests. “We want our own elected rector from our own university.”
He said the protesters did not object to Bulu himself, but to the way he took office. Protesters compared his appointment to the cases of more than 100 elected mayors who have been removed from office and replaced by those appointed by the government in recent years.
Bulu at first tried to get involved with the students, talking to them on campus and expressing his love for the heavy metal band Metallica. But as the protests continued, he declined interviews and stepped up security measures in his office.
Academics raised questions about Mr. Bulu’s qualifications on social media, accusing him of plagiarism in his academic articles and dissertations. Bulu denied plagiarism and explained in a television interview that he had forgotten to put quotes in some places in his writings.
But professors and students are more concerned with what their appointment means for the future of the university and its free-thinking campus. The students said they feared that clubs and extracurricular activities will be closed and that the faculty will change.
“We have certain principles that were officially declared in 2012 by the University Senate, related to academic freedoms, academic and scientific autonomy, as well as the democratic values of our university,” said Can Candan, who teaches documentary studies in Bogazici and is among those who protest daily. “This appointment clearly violates these principles. So we decided that we have to talk and say that we don’t accept that. “
Halil Ibrahim Yenigun, who was expelled from his position at a Turkish university for signing the peace petition in 2016 and now teaches political science at San Jose State University in California, called the appointment of a “hostile takeover” from one of the last universities that retained any academic autonomy.
“This was a long-awaited violent attack on the academy, as Erdogan was taking control of all streams of social life, one by one,” he said.
The goal was twofold, he said. Erdogan was determined to create a generation of Turks to return a century of secularism to a republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s first president. But his supporters also wanted the upward mobility that the University of Bogazici offers, he said; its graduates lead many of Turkey’s leading companies and academic institutions.
Erdogan’s supporters explain the movement in terms of correcting decades of discrimination against religious conservatives who have long been excluded from public education and public jobs. Women wearing headscarves were not allowed to enroll in public universities until Erdogan reversed the decision a decade ago.
A pro-government columnist, Hilal Kaplan, a Bogazici graduate wearing a hijab, compared the struggle of religious conservatives to that of Malcolm X and black Americans and warned in an opinion piece that the “privileged” secularists who ruled the country for decades would fight back.
“They will oppose you with self-fulfilling arrogance,” she warned the new rector in a Twitter post, “And I hope you go on your way without worrying about them. Bogazici belongs not only to elitists, but to the nation. “
Many former students from Bogazici denounced this characterization, stressing that the university is a public institution and open to students with the best marks in entrance exams across the country.
Murat Sevinç, a constitutional law professor who taught in Bogazici, wrote in a newspaper column how his illiterate mother and worker father pinched and saved to give him and his sisters an education.
“The son of parents who never saw the school became a teacher,” he wrote. “Elitist, this and that, stop it, put that garbage aside. It’s work, work, work ”.
Deniz Karakullukcu, a philosophy student who is also a founding member of DEVA, a new political party, considered Kaplan’s vision as government propaganda.
“This is not the situation at all,” he said. “There are students from all provinces, from very different cultures, worldviews and religious beliefs, but when they come to Bogazici, they tend to have a more liberal view.”
Zeynep Bayrak, a senior political science student who wears a hijab, said she joined the protests because the president’s appointment was not democratic. She said she received abuse on social media, but she also received many messages of support.
“I am religious; I’m Muslim; I believe that we can all coexist, ”she said. “We are not going to stop.”