Oxford academics denounce intervention on Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Academics from Oxford University have published an image and several texts of solidarity with their colleagues in Istanbul’s prestigious Boğaziçi University on Saturday, against the appointment of an unelected rector by the Turkish president.

Due to coronavirus restrictions, academics couldn’t come together in person and digitally placed themselves in front of Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera library holding placards in Turkish and English instead, news website Bianet reported.

Oxford in solidarity with Boğaziçi University!

Boğaziçi Dayanışmasına mezunlarımızın desteği İngiltere’nin her şehrinden artarak devam ediyor.#AşağıBakmıyoruz#KabulEtmiyoruzVazgeçmiyoruz#FreeBogazici#BoğaziçiUK#WeStand4Boğaziçi pic.twitter.com/4GnlDmbzPd

— Boğaziçi UK (@BogaziciUk) February 12, 2021

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed party loyalist Melih Bulu as Boğaziçi rector as one of his first acts in 2021, and protests against Bulu started on Jan. 4 as he wasn’t elected and hadn’t been Boğaziçi faculty beforehand.

Upon protests, Bulu promptly authorised riot police to enter campus – something the police can’t do otherwise.

Protests escalated when a pro-LGBT student club put up a piece of art in an installation that depicted the Muslim holy site Kaaba alongside rainbow flags, with Erdoğan himself targeting the students, and going as far as saying there was no such thing as LGBT.

Such developments “constitute an assault on the role that universities should play as guardians of the rational process,” said Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith FRS, former director general at CERN, in a message. “The peaceful protests which they provoked, which have been met with violence, represent, in essence, a demand and fight for academic freedom.”

Khalili Research Centre Director Jeremy Johns said Turkish universities had declined significantly under Erdoğan’s rule, and that “the appointment by presidential decree of Melih Bulu reaches a new low.”

The rector has been accused of plagiarism in his master’s and doctoral theses. “Bulu’s proven reputation as a homophobe and a plagiarist exposes Boğaziçi and, indeed, Turkey to ridicule. More importantly, his appointment abolishes at a stroke the academic freedoms and democratic values that Boğaziçi has cherished and protected for forty years,” Johns said.

“Philosophers worldwide are watching with horror the violations of university autonomy there and the brutal treatment of students. The government's behaviour is doing grave damage to the standing of Turkish education,” said Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University Timothy Williamson.

Boğaziçi’s achievements and academic reputation, “made possible over the course of many years of painstaking labour, are now in grave danger because of the regime's brutal efforts to impose its political control over the university,” Ottoman history professor Aslı Niyazioğlu said.

“Boğaziçi University is not the only one. The appointment of unelected rectors to prominent Turkish universities (including my alma mater, Istanbul Technical University) in the recent years aims to supress the critical voices of numerous academics against its oppressive policies, and to punish them,” said Zeynep Yürekli-Görkay from Oriental Studies at Oxford’s Wolfson College. “Their defeat would mean the loss of possibly the last bastion of academic freedom in Turkey.”