* Photo: Boğaziçi University students
Click to read the article in Turkish
After Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed Prof. Melih Bulu, an academic outside its community, as the new president of Boğaziçi University, the students and faculty members have been protesting the appointment.
While a group of academics turn their backs to the rector's office for an hour every day, some students also set up tents at the South Campus.
The protests of students also continued yesterday (January 27), when Melih Bulu was attending an online meeting titled "The New Normal of Entrepreneurship: Threats-Opportunities". As the slogans of the students were heard during the meeting, the space in front of the rector's office at the South Campus was closed and students were barred from entering the area.
Boğaziçi Solidarity Platform has shared a part of Melih Bulu's online meeting on its social media account, attaching the note:
"Neither our new normal nor the old one was a trustee and it will never be; this is what we cannot make you understand with both the slogan in the background and the unity of students from dozens of universities. This is such a determination that you cannot give an interview with ease, even to a screen, while holding your office as the trustee!"
Yeni normalimiz de eski normalimiz de kayyum değildi, asla da olmayacak; arka fondaki sloganla da, onlarca üniversiteden öğrencilerin birliğiyle de size anlatamadığımız işte bu. Kayyumluğunuzda ekrana rahatça demeç bile veremeyeceğiniz bir kararlılık bu! @melihbulu pic.twitter.com/sQQpVbchKG
— Boğaziçi Dayanışması (@boundayanisma) January 27, 2021
Students have also set up their tents in the area previously closed by the police and security forces. There are reportedly attempts to take down the tents and some tents have been damaged in this intervention.
Kayyumun,öğrenciyle emekçileri çatıştırma çabalarına rağmen kayyumluk etrafındaki ABLUKAYI DAĞITTIK, ÇADIRLARIMIZI KURDUK.#BoğaziçiAblukada#BoğaziçiTeslimOlmayacak pic.twitter.com/BNB82ReFL0
— Boğaziçi Dayanışması (@boundayanisma) January 28, 2021
What happened?Prof. Melih Bulu has been appointed as the President of Boğaziçi University in a Presidential Decree issued on January 1. The appointment of Bulu has sparked harsh criticisms among both the students and academics of the university as well as in the academic community. Appointed to Boğaziçi, one of the most prestigious universities in Turkey, from outside its community, Bulu was a candidate for nomination to run in the Parliamentary elections in 2015 for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The students and several students' clubs of the university have been campaigning on social media under the hashtag #kayyımrektöristemiyoruz (We don't want a trustee university president). The call of the students was also supported by the faculty members of the university, who released a joint statement on January 3. "An academic outside Bogazici University community was appointed as rector (university president), which is a practice introduced for the first time after the 1980s military tutelage," read their statement. Amid harsh criticisms of students and faculty members, Prof. Bulu has shared a message on his Twitter account, welcoming his appointment to the position, saying, "We are all in the same boat." The students protested the appointment of Bulu in front of the South Campus of the university in İstanbul on January 4. However, the police intervened into the protest with pepper gas and plastic bullets. Next day, it was reported that there were detention warrants against 28 people for "violating the law on meetings and demonstrations" and "resisting the officer on duty." Later in the day, 22 of them were detained. 40 people in total were detained over the protests. All of the detained were released on January 7 and 8, 2021. About Melih BuluProf. Melih Bulu was appointed as the President of Haliç University on January 17, 2020. In office in this foundation university for less than a year, he has been appointed as the President of Boğaziçi University. He was a Dean and University President at the İstinye University from 2016 to 2019. Between the years of 2010 and 2016, he was the Head of the Business Management Department of İstanbul Şehir University's Business Management and Management Science Faculty. He was the General Coordinator of International Competitiveness Research Institute (URAK), an NGO working on economic competitiveness of cities and countries, from the year 2017 to 2019. Since 2011, he has been the Executive Board member of the İstanbul Electric-Electronic Machinery and Informatics Exporters R&D Market. In 2002, he founded the Sarıyer District Organization of the ruling AKP in İstanbul. In 2015, he was a candidate for nomination to run in the Parliamentary elections from the AKP in the first election district in İstanbul. He studied Industrial Engineering at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara in 1992. He did his MBA and PhD at Boğaziçi University's Department of Management. |
(DŞ/SD)
