The government attacked the peacefully protesting students, and the faculty viciously. At one point there were sharpshooters atop the buildings surrounding the campus. Homes and the parents’ homes were attacked by the police. The law enforcement didn’t even bother ringing the bells. They smashed the door to raid the homes. Professors were beaten, students were brutally arrested.
Students, faculty, and alumni support the academicians’ 260-day protest of anti-democratic rule at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul
Academicians of one of the best universities in Turkey are on their 260th day of protest against the anti-democratic, top-down, and insulting government intervention to academic freedoms.
University of Boğaziçi has a history, as did other universities, in Turkey to govern itself without government intervention. However, with the heavy hand of the current regime’s government of Erdoğan, all schools of higher education were collected under a central organization governed, as expected, by Erdoğan himself. With many top professors and educators fired for non-loyalty to the ruling AKP party, or Erdoğan, many exiled for life, most so-called universities succumbed to the pressure and accepted with military discipline the command structure weaved above their heads. Rectors and administrators changed to bring all Erdoğan loyalists to run these institutions like the ruling party’s youth organizations.
Currently, none of Turkey’s University Rectors, or chancellors, have a published academic paper with international references. Yet, they are loyal to the government; meritocracy be damned.
Boğaziçi, on the other hand, refused to be treated like a child needing discipline. Erdoğan appointed a disqualified rector to the school against an elected academician. However, the students, alumni, and the faculty rejected the dictum to have a businessman run their alma mater as a business. Every day since his top-down appointment, the faculty have been protesting every morning in the yard. That was 260 days yesterday.
The government attacked the peacefully protesting students and the faculty viciously. At one point, there were sharpshooters atop the buildings surrounding the campus. The police attacked the students at their homes and their parents’ homes. The law enforcement didn’t even bother ringing the bells. They smashed the doors and walls to raid the homes. Professors were beaten, students were brutally arrested.
Frustrated with not being able to break the will of the top college school, Erdoğan dismissed his loyal buddy, Melh Bulu, from the position he appointed. He needed results. However, by that time, the credibility of the so-called rector had hit a new low when it was disclosed that he had plagiarized his academic research from other sources in the past. Yet, he was loyal to the Turkish regime, which is all that mattered.
Even though a new appointee, Naci İnce, now serves the state against the university, the protests and the resistance to defend academic freedoms and dignity continues. The chant of the day was, “We do not accept, we do not surrender!”
In speeches given, the attacks on education were highlighted. Other heads of schools in the university were under investigation now by the government stooges because they refused to prosecute the students for defending the freedom of academia.
Sendika.org News (MB)
