ISTANBUL – For several weeks now – rain, shine or even snow – there has been an uprising in one of the holiest establishments in the Turkish Academy: the campus of Bogazici University in Istanbul.
Every day, faculty members stand in a socially distributed, silent protest on the main floor, with their backs to the rector’s office, whose opposition is opposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Traditionally, the university academics choose the rector, who controls a large part of life in the university, from among their own ranks. By nominating an outside nominee to his liking, Mr. Erdogan is starting a fight for control of one of Turkey’s institutional gems.
Bogazici University is one of the best universities in Turkey, equipped with a surprisingly beautiful campus, located above a bead fortress on the banks of the Bosphorus. It was once part of the American-founded Robert College which opened in 1863 and is known for its Western leaning liberal art culture.
As such, it has long been a target of Mr. Erdogan and his religious conservative supporters, who not only desire its prestige but also regret its liberal attitude.
The appointment of Melih Bulu, a businessman known for his ties to Mr. Erdogan’s Party for Justice and Development, or AK Party – he was an unsuccessful election candidate for the party a few years ago – is seen as another step that Mr. Erdogan took. to expand its influence on all aspects of Turkish social and cultural life.
Mr. Erdogan has amassed sweeping forces since a failed coup in 2016. In a state of emergency, he ordered widespread action against his opponents, including many unrelated to the coup, such as journalists, politicians and human rights activists.
In the months before the coup, his goal was the world of academia. Thousands of academics have been purged from their jobs because they signed a petition in early 2016 to call for peace with Kurdish militants. In a presidential decision later that year, Mr. Erdogan claimed the right to appoint university rectors.
The worst purifications of Bogazici University have been spared, but students and faculty members have said they always know a fight is threatening. They were forced to accept a compromise candidate for rector four years ago, and several students protesting against Turkey’s intervention in Syria were prosecuted.
Mr. Erdogan called Mr. Bulu appointed on January 1st. Within days, hundreds of students were protesting, some clashing with police, shutting down the university’s main entrance to campus, and more struggling with plain clothes on campus.
At least thirty students were detained after their first protests in police attacks on their homes and in support of protests in other cities. Several students have filed complaints because they have been subjected to strip searches. In response, the students turned to other forms of protest, made art exhibitions, made cartoons, and composed and played songs on campus.
Tensions rose sharply after members of the government exposed artwork by LGBTQ protesters and police detained four students and seized pride flags.
The protesters on Monday called on unions and political parties to join mass protests and police took action, shutting down the main entrance of the campus and detaining dozens of students as they stormed the campus and ordered them home.
Bogazici students insisted they would hold a sustained protest until the appointment of Mr. Bulu is withdrawn or he resigns.
“We do not want an appointed rector,” said Ardis Canturk, 23, a construction engineering student. This is one of those who attends the daily demonstrations. “We want our own elected rector of our own university.”
He said the protesters did not object to Mr. Bulu not, but against the manner in which he held the post. Protesters compared his appointment to the affairs of more than 100 elected mayors who have been removed from office in recent years and replaced by government appointments.
Mr. Bulu first tried to connect with the students, talk to them on campus and express his love for the heavy metal band Metallica. But as the protests continued, he turned down interviews and increased security measures around his office.
Academics have questions about Mr. Bulu’s qualifications emerged on social media, accusing him of plagiarism in his articles and his academic dissertations. Mr. Bulu denied plagiarism and explained in a television interview that he had just forgotten to put quotation marks in his writings here and there.
However, professors and students are concerned about what his appointment means for the future of the university and its famous free-thinking campus. Students said they were afraid that clubs and extracurricular activities would be closed and that the faculty would change.
“We have certain principles that were officially set by the University Senate in 2012, related to academic freedoms, academic and scientific autonomy, as well as democratic values of our university,” Can Candan said. He teaches documentary film studies to Bogazici and is among those who protest daily. ‘This appointment clearly violates these principles. Therefore, we decided that we should talk and say that we do not accept it. ”
Halil Ibrahim Yenigun, who was ousted from his post 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 a “hostile takeover” of one of the last university to retain any academic autonomy.
“It was a long-awaited onslaught against academia as Erdogan took over all the flow of social life one by one,” he said.
The goal was twofold, he said. Mr. Erdogan wanted to raise a generation of Turks to return to a century of secularism in a republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s first president. But his supporters also wanted the upward mobility that Bogazici University offers, he said; its graduates lead many of Turkey’s top enterprises and academic institutions.
The supporters of mr. Erdogan explains the move in terms of redressing decades of discrimination against religious conservatives who have long been outside public education and government work. Women wearing headscarves may not enroll in public universities until Erdogan reverses the decision a decade ago.
A pro-government columnist, Hilal Kaplan, a graduate of Bogazici who wears a hijab, compares the struggle of religious conservatives to that of Malcolm X and Black Americans and warns in an opinion piece that the ‘privileged’ secularists who ruled the country for decades long reigns, will fight back.
“They will oppose you with a self-fulfilling arrogance,” she warned the new rector in a Twitter post“And I expect you to go your own way without caring about them. Bogazici belong not only to the elitists but also to the nation. ”
Many Bogazici alumni have denied the characterization, pointing out that the university is a public institution and is open to students with the highest score on nationwide entrance exams.
Murat Sevinç, a professor of constitutional jurisprudence in Bogazici, wrote in a newspaper article how his illiterate mother and father were squeezed out of the working class and saved to give him and his sisters an education.
“The son of parents who never saw school became a professor,” he wrote. ‘Elitist, this and that, come from there, leave the rubbish aside. It’s work, work, work. ”
Deniz Karakullukcu, a philosophy student who is also a founding member of DEVA, a new political party, told me. Kaplan’s view as government propaganda downplayed.
“That’s not the situation at all,” he said. “There are students from every province, from very different cultures, worldviews and religious beliefs, but when they come to Bogazici, they tend to take a more liberal view.”
Zeynep Bayrak, a political science student in her final year wearing a hijab, said she joined the protests because the appointment of the rector was undemocratic. She said she received abuse on social media but also received many messages of support.
‘I’m religious; I am a Muslim; I believe that we can all exist together, ”she said. “We will not stop.”