ISTANBUL (AP) – Turkey’s president has ordered the creation of two new departments in the country’s most prestigious university, shaken by weeks of demonstrations protesting his appointment of a new rector with ties to the government.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision, published Saturday in the Government Gazette, says law and communications faculties will be launched at Bogazici University. Critics say the creation of new branches would allow the president-appointed rector to staff them with government loyalists.
For more than a month, students and teachers have been leading mainly peaceful protests against the new rector, Melih Bulu, who has ties to Erdogan’s ruling party. They are calling for Bulu’s resignation and for the university to be able to elect its own president.
In an open letter to Erdogan, protesting Bogazici students called the decision to open new departments harassment and “ little tricks. ”
“Your attempts to fill our university with your own political militants is the symptom of the political crisis you have found yourself in,” the letter said.
Police have detained hundreds of protesters at the university and in solidarity protests elsewhere, some taken after raided their homes. Most were released later.
Top government officials have said that terrorist groups are provoking the protests, and Erdogan has called the protesting students terrorists. The press statements of the governor of Istanbul include detention numbers with alleged links to banned left-wing and Kurdish militant groups.
Erdogan has also selected Ayse Bugra, a professor emeritus at the university. Bugra is married to Turkish philanthropist and civil society leader Osman Kavala, who has been in prison for more than three years on charges of espionage and an attempt to overthrow the government.
Erdogan accuses Kavala of being the ‘Turkish leg’ of American billionaire philanthropist George Soros. On Friday, when a court in Istanbul ruled to keep Kavala in prison, Erdogan said that “his wife is a woman who is one of the Bogazici University provocateurs”.
Her students released a separate statement on Saturday saying the attacks on her must stop.
“We are deeply saddened by the personal and malicious attacks on her following the appointment of the Rector of Bogazici University,” her students said for four decades, adding, “Ayşe Bugra has been an inspiration to the thousands of students who she taught and tutored. … She is a treasure for both Bogazici University and Turkey. ”
Bugra said she regretted the president’s statement and was saddened by her country.
Officials from the United States, the United Nations and the European Union have criticized the way Turkey has handled the protests, as well as a series of homophobic comments made by Erdogan and other officials as they denounced the demonstrations.
With the same order, the president opened new faculties at different universities, joined some others and appointed eleven rectors elsewhere.
The students said in their letter to Erdogan that they knew its publication would likely lead to criminal charges, including for insulting the president, but they pledged to keep speaking out and protesting.