ISTANBUL – For several weeks – rain, sunshine or even snow – an uprising has been going on in one of the most sacred institutions in Turkish academia: the campus of Bogazici University in Istanbul.
Every day, faculty members stand on the large lawn in a socially distant, silent protest, with their backs to the rector’s office, whose appointment by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan they oppose.
Traditionally, university academics choose the rector, who regulates much of university life, from their own ranks. By appointing an outside appointee to his liking, Mr Erdogan has unleashed a struggle for control over one of Turkey’s institutional jewels.
Bogazici University is one of the best universities in Turkey, endowed with a surprisingly beautiful campus, perched above a crenellated fortress on the banks of the Bosphorus. Once part of the American-founded Robert College that opened in 1863, it is known for its Western-focused liberal art culture.
As such, it has long been a target of Mr Erdogan and his religiously conservative supporters, who not only covet his prestige but also deplore his liberal stance.
The nomination of Melih Bulu, a businessman known for his ties to Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or the AK party – he was a failed election candidate for the party several years ago – has been seen as a new step taken by Mr Erdogan. to expand its influence on every aspect of Turkish social and cultural life.
Mr. Erdogan has amassed enormous powers since a failed coup in 2016. In a state of emergency, he ordered a widespread crackdown on his opponents, including many unconnected with the coup, such as journalists, politicians and human rights activists.
In the months before the coup, his target had been the world of academia. Thousands of academics were stripped of their jobs because they signed a petition in early 2016 calling for peace with Kurdish militants. Later that year, Mr. Erdogan claimed the right to appoint university rectors under a presidential decree.
Bogazici University had been spared the worst of the purges, but students and teachers said they always knew there was a battle ahead. 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 appointed Mr. Bulu on January 1. Within days, hundreds of students were found to be protesting, some clashing with the police, who blocked the university’s main entrance to the campus, and even more with plainclothes officers on campus.
At least 30 students have been arrested in police raids on their homes following the initial protests and in supporting demonstrations in other cities. Several students have filed complaints about undergoing comic searches. In response, the students turned to other forms of protest, putting on art exhibitions, creating cartoons, and composing and playing songs on campus.
Tensions escalated after members of the government denounced the artworks of LGBTQ protesters and police detained four students and confiscated pride flags.
The protesters on Monday called for unions and political parties to join mass protests and police proved in force by locking the main entrance to the campus and detaining dozens of students as they raided the campus and ordered them home.
The Bogazici students have insisted that they continue to protest until Bulu’s appointment is withdrawn or he resigns.
“We don’t want an appointed rector,” said Ardis Canturk, 23, a construction engineering student who is one of those attending the daily protests. “We want our own elected rector of our own university.”
He said the protesters did not object to Mr Bulu himself, but to the way he held the post. Protesters likened his appointment to the cases of more than 100 elected mayors who have been removed from their posts and replaced by government appointees in recent years.
Mr. Bulu initially tried to interact with the students, talk to them on campus and express his love for the heavy metal band Metallica. But as the protests continued, he declined interviews and increased security measures around his office.
Academics have questioned Mr. Bulu’s qualifications on social media, accusing him of plagiarism in his articles and his academic dissertations. Mr. Bulu has denied plagiarism and explained in a television interview that he had just forgotten to put quotation marks in some places in his writings.
But professors and students are most concerned about what his appointment means for the future of the university and its famous free-thinking campus. Students said they feared clubs and extracurricular activities would be closed and the faculty would change.
“We have certain principles, officially declared by the University Senate in 2012, regarding academic freedoms, academic and scientific autonomy, as well as democratic values of our university,” said Can Candan, Lecturer in Documentary Film Studies at Bogazici and among those who protest daily . “This appointment is clearly in violation of these principles. So we have decided that we must speak up and say that we will not accept this. “
Halil Ibrahim Yenigun, who was purged 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 universities which has retained some academic autonomy.
“This was a long-awaited attack on academia, as Erdogan took over the whole stream of social life one by one,” he said.
The goal was twofold, he said. Erdogan was determined to raise a generation of Turks to turn back 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 run many of the best Turkish companies and academic institutions.
Mr. Erdogan’s supporters explain the move in terms of rectifying decades of discrimination against religious conservatives who have long had no access to public education and government jobs. Women wearing headscarves were not allowed to enroll in public universities until Mr. Erdogan reversed that statement a decade ago.
A pro-government columnist, Hilal Kaplan, a Bogazici graduate wearing a hijab, compared the struggles of religious conservatives to those of Malcolm X and Black Americans and warned in an op-ed that the ‘privileged’ secularists who ruled the country for decades would fight back .
“They will work against you with a self-fulfilling arrogance,” she warned the new rector in a row Twitter message, “And I expect you to go your way without caring about them. Bogazici belongs not only to the elitists, but also to the nation. “
Many Bogazici alumni have denounced that characterization, pointing out that the university is a public institution and open to students with the highest scores on national entrance exams.
Murat Sevinç, a professor of constitutional law who taught at Bogazici, wrote in a newspaper column how his illiterate mother and working-class father had pinched and saved to educate him and his sisters.
“The son of parents who never went to school became a professor,” he wrote. “Elitist, this and that, get off, leave that shit aside. It’s work, work, work. “
Deniz Karakullukcu, a philosophy student who is also a founding member of DEVA, a new political party, dismissed Ms. Kaplan’s position as government propaganda.
“This is 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 have a more liberal outlook.”
Zeynep Bayrak, a senior political science student wearing a hijab, said she had joined the protests because the rector’s appointment was undemocratic. She said she had been abused on social media, but also received many statements of support.
“I am religious; I am a Muslim; I believe we can all coexist, ”she said. “We will not stop.”