President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s appointment of a ruling-party loyalist to lead one of Turkey’s most prestigious universities sparked outrage about attacks on academic independence.
A New Year’s presidential decree announced that Melih Bulu, a veteran member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) who stood for the party in municipal and parliamentary elections, as the new rector of Bosphorus University in Istanbul.
The declaration sparked protests by students and staff in which police locked the university’s gates and made 36 arrests, many of them in early-morning raids by special operations teams armed with assault rifles.
Lawyer Ezgi Onalan said some of those arrested had been beaten and strip-searched.
“The case files contain allegations of resisting police and defying Law 2911,” on assemblies and demonstrations, she said. “For this, we know there’s no need to raid homes in dawn operations and that this is illegal.”
Prof Bulu’s assignment as a “kayyum,” or government-appointed trustee, was the latest development in what government critics say is an attack on academic freedom in Turkey, where rectors have traditionally been elected by university teaching staff.
Since emergency powers were introduced in 2016 after a coup attempt, Mr Erdogan has regularly selected university heads but has previously chosen candidates from within universities’ academic rolls.
Prof Bulu’s selection for at Bosphorus University – known as Bogazici University in Turkish – was the first time an outsider had been appointed to lead the institution since the military junta of the 1980s, the university faculty said.
“This is yet another case of many ongoing anti-democratic practices since 2016, aiming to abolish rectorial elections,” it said in a statement.
Hundreds of academics were prosecuted after signing a petition in early 2016 calling for peace in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority south-east following military operations against insurgents in the region.
Thousands more have been dismissed from their jobs in the post-coup crackdown, creating “a climate of fear and self-censorship on campus,” according to Human Rights Watch.
“We will not shut up, we will not accept this and we will not give up,” said Seyma Altundal, a sociology student at Bosphorus University.
“This pressure on us is only to defend the trustee, to lead to the hijacking of democratic spaces.
“It seems that this unity and solidarity disturbs the trustee mentality. They made the decision to keep our friends in detention for two days so that they cannot come to the protest on Wednesday ... We know that our friends are right, that appointing a trustee is unjustified.”
A history student, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said the protests were to protect freedom of speech on campus. “We are protesting against the government’s interference in the freedoms we should have as students,” he said. “The government is afraid of free thought and debate. They want everyone to be like them.”
Founded in 1863 by an American philanthropist and a missionary, Bosphorus University numbers former prime ministers, captains of industry and leading artists among its alumni. It is rated among the country’s top seven universities in the Times Higher Education list.
Protests against the imposition of Prof Bulu, previously rector at Istanbul’s Halic University for about a year, on Monday were greeted with police batons, tear gas and plastic bullets.
The next day, scores of riot police blocked the main entrance to the campus overlooking the Bosphorus waterway from Istanbul’s European shore. Staff boycotted Prof Bulu’s swearing-in ceremony, turning their backs on the building where it took place and calling for the arrested students to be released.
On Wednesday, Istanbul’s governor issued a ban on demonstrations, citing concerns over the coronavirus.
Pro-government media outlets cast the protestors as terrorist supporters while the deputy interior minister said most of those arrested were not students at the university.
Prof Bulu’s appointment came under further criticism after evidence appeared online purporting to show he had plagiarised others’ academic work for his master’s thesis and doctoral paper. He has denied the allegations.
In an interview with broadcaster HaberTurk on Tuesday evening, Prof Bulu denounced the protests as “provocations” while also bizarrely saying he identified with the university’s culture because he is a fan of heavy metal band Metallica.
Meanwhile, Istanbul’s opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu tweeted his support to the students, calling for an end to “partisanship”.
“I stand by the rightful struggle of Bosphorus University’s students and academics,” he said.
