On January 1st 2021 a single-line, single-signature so-called “presidential decree” appointed an unknown person to one of the country’s most acclaimed universities. We are talking of an educational institution with a 160-year history which since 1971 has turned into one of the country’s most aspired public universities. This appointment was unacceptable and completely contradicted our university principles that were prepared by its faculty body and approved by the university senate in 2012. On January 3, 2021, we, as faculty members of this university, made a public announcement that we do not accept this appointment and will not give up to fight against it on the basis of these principles, three of which we highlighted in our declaration. Just putting the one-line presidential decree side by side with the faculty members' text clearly reveals on its own the main problem. Yet, this is what happened thereafter: Less than a month after Bulu's appointment, Naci Inci, a faculty member in the Physics Department, became this person's vice-rector and “managed” to be appointed as rector in August of the same year. This was despite the fact that hundreds of Boğaziçi University academics had voted against him with a 95% disapproval rate. Regarding both Bulu and İnci's appointments, some professors considered to wait and see, but the vast majority was well aware that these appointments were rather calculated, carefully planned to bring the institution into line with the ideology of the Erdogan regime.
Now let's look at what happened over the course of five years: hundreds of our students, admitted to this university with their hard work and the sacrifices of their families, experienced violent detention processes, were imprisoned for weeks, struggled with court proceedings that lasted years, and in recent years, some even had their university IDs revoked, preventing them from attending classes and exams. Since last year, we also saw the cancelation of graduate admissions of students who spoke out against the trustee administration.
Within these five years, right after his top-down appointment as rector Naci Inci dismissed all opposing instructors whose dismissal was easy due to their non-tenured, contract-based positions. Likewise, the courses of retired faculty, who were awarded by the university’s senate the prestigious title of “emeritus/emerita” precisely because of their high qualifications, were closed down. This caused a further serious curbing of the wide diversity of courses that defined our university. Soon thereafter, these former professors were even banned from campus, something that subsequent court decisions declared as unlawful. Yet, these decisions did not keep the trustee administration from continuing the ban.
Campus bans were also imposed on our graduates who stood by us, saying “we do not accept, we do not give up,” and their graduate cards were revoked, again in violation of the law. Our administrative staff, the fourth constituent of our institution, faced harassment, sometimes amounting to severe psychological mistreatment, especially against those who objected and sought their rights. A war was waged against our authorized union, Eğitim-Sen, for years, and the profile of administrative staff was completely changed by the hiring over 400 personnel (most of whom were pressured to join a government-aligned union) at lightning speed from outside. Senior administrative staff, and directors who carried the institution's memory, who had worked hard for the institution with long hours of unpaid overtime, were removed from their positions and assigned to passive duties, and many of them left when they became eligible for retirement. Given that a significant proportion of these employees are Alevis (this is related to the Rumeli Hisarüstü region being an area where Alevis have lived in large numbers for decades), we also have the impression that this siege and takeover has also an agenda of “cleansing of beliefs” at our university.
Today, the university is physically unrecognizable. Whereas the majority of management and administrative staff used to be women, now we see men all over the place, not to mention the many undercover police and the security staff. The Aptullah Kuran library has been demolished, and the once-vibrant south campus now appears deserted, soulless, and devoid of students. This was what we had predicted way back in 2021.
Let us now move on to the recent video released by TvNet, a channel backed by the government-backed power of Albayrak holding. The fact that they waited so long to release this “documentary” shows [1] that we have indeed been able to make our case be heard and seen, (2) that despite them having almost unlimited access to all the resources of power—money, the Higher Education Council (YÖK), the police, the judiciary, and the media—they have been unable to establish their legitimacy, and (3) that their expectation that the resistance would somehow fade out was not fulfilled (otherwise, why bother to do this “documentary”...). Droned footages, interviewees, posed as “the new faculty” talking about how bad this university was, despite the fact that they never worked at this university...
As Faruk Birtek mentioned in his interview with Göksel Göksü on Medyascope the other day, the current trustee rector, Naci Inci, is someone who worked in the physics department at Boğaziçi University for a while, then moved to Sabancı University, and under normal circumstances should not have been granted a return to our university (it was a widely accepted principle to not “take back” those faculty member who had left a public university for a non-public one). However, Inci’s former physics department (unfortunately!) voted by a margin of one vote in favor of his return. Meanwhile, since 2021, three professors have left the physics department and transferred to other universities. At least two of these three professors were brilliant researchers and excellent teachers. Both of these had at least some small hope that the ruthlessness of the trustee administration would come to an end; when that hope faded, they bid a painful farewell to this institution they had poured their hearts into. It is significant that, apart from Naci İnci, only two other Boğaziçi professors were key players in this whole demolition operation: Fazıl Önder Sönmez and Gürkan Kumbaroğlu. The latter’s career could only last until 2025, when his position as vice-rector was revoked by the trustee administration. Curiously, since his revocation he has not returned to his department; we understand that for some reason he is on leave (whether a paid or an unpaid leave no one knows..). Fazıl Önder Sönmez, whose main job seems to be to “deactivate” ID cards of students, retired professors and alumni, continues to do so as before. It is also interesting that, despite being one of the institution's actual professors, the Tvnet film team did not consider to include him in their production. Who knows, perhaps he himself did not want to speak…
Now, we would like to ask those who have not yet lost their basic reasoning skills: Who is right, Albayrak's media or us, the four constituents (faculty, students, alumni, and the 2-3-decade-long union) who have filed over 250 lawsuits to date and won most of them? In this series of articles, you will hear the voices of all four constituents; the decision is yours. And perhaps the most beautiful answer will be provided by the documentary “Öğrenci İşi Bu” (“This is Student Work”), prepared by the students. As soon as their documentary came out a whole army of government-backed trolls ensured that it be blocked from open access. This only shows their fear of presenting the other, actual, side of the story. Professor Faruk Birtek touched on this again in his interview when he named this a ‘regime of animosity’. While the so-called ‘Presidential Government System’ (a system that grants unchecked power to the head of the state) offers endless opportunities to a group of people, one asks oneself why they did not attempt to craft their own top university endowed with their political Islamic, “local and nationalistic” ideology? After all, they have all the tools and resources to pour as much money into their “own” universities with the goal to surpass Bogazici University. Actually, they tried this, yet, Bogazici University remained the most sought-for public university. It must have been this envy and anger that made them take the short route, i.e., simply occupy and take over this unique institution. This is nothing else but plunder. Inspired by an ironic entry in our “Bogazici University Resistance Dictionary”,
This fall, as four academics from different disciplines, we started a ”concept workshop” with our students, where we try to dive into the meaning of big concepts that intersect across our disciplines. The first concept we explored was “truth”. We asked ourselves how philosophy, political theory, psychology, and law approach this concept, which characteristics each one of them emphasizes or neglects. Ultimately, we arrived at the conclusion, as suggested by Yıldız Silier, [2] that perhaps what matters most is being truthful...
Footnotes
[1] When a graduate wearing a headscarf talks about being unable to attend graduation ceremonies, one would think this absurd ban was imposed not by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK), but rather was a specific restriction by Boğaziçi University. Yet at the time, the ban was in place at all universities. The years in question were around 2008. And interestingly, it is rarely mentioned that as late as 2011, R. T. Erdoğan was still able to say, “our people are not yet ready for a parliamentary candidate who wears a headscarf”—even though, at the time, women’s organizations had called on all parties to nominate candidates who wore headscarves.
[2] Yıldız Silier, who graduated top of her class from Boğaziçi University’s Department of Mathematics, completed her master’s degree in philosophy at the same university. She later earned a PhD from the University of Kent in the UK with her research on the concept of freedom. From 2003 until her dismissal in Oct 2023, Yıldız Silier taught at Boğaziçi University’s Department of Philosophy.
(EM/VC/VK)
