The Boğaziçi resistance and Nazım, three years on

You know what has happened to Boğaziçi University; a trustee rector was appointed, but the first rector appointed could not tolerate the wrong that was done and did not accept it, so someone else was appointed in their place. Since that day, the university has been taking blow after blow. The goal is to make one of Turkey's best educational institutions resemble the other educational institutions that are regressing every day.

The latest trustee has been finding ways to dismiss faculty members they do not like since the day they arrived, but despite this, there are still academics who are resisting. 

Yesterday, Cem Say shared photos on X; the protest has reached its third year, and 7 academics—judging by their age, one can assume they are professors—held their resistance protest again during their lunch break; they held signs that read:

“We haven't given up for 3 years!”

“Autonomous, free, democratic university!”

“We do not accept it!”

The academics should be commended; they are putting their own careers at risk to protect a good educational institution. 

If the academics at Boğaziçi had chosen to enter into a chain of command instead of risking their careers, they could have been sitting in a villa with a swimming pool, like another rector we saw in the newspapers yesterday. Or, as we saw at another university in recent months, a university administrator had appointed all their relatives to their own university; they could have done that too. We have even encountered something more interesting: another university posted a job opening for an academic, and in the job description, they even wrote the name of the person; the Boğaziçi academics could have also written the names of whatever spouses, friends, or cronies they wanted to hire and started them at their university.

But they are pushing all of these aside and, by risking their careers, they have continued to resist for three years. 

A move worthy of tipping one's hat

But unfortunately, in the coming months, we will see these academics, who are not thinking about their careers today, being removed from their positions one by one. The great purge, which the theorists of this government refer to as 'turning them into the living dead,' will eventually find them too, just as it has been done to thousands of other academics, journalists, civil servants, workers, diplomats, soldiers, bureaucrats, and people from all walks of life.

Yesterday also marked the 122nd birthday of Nazım Hikmet. Looking at the photo of the resistance at Boğaziçi, there is a poem by the great poet that immediately comes to mind, one that perfectly describes our present day. The master poet saw, even back then, those who take a step back in the face of oppression, make concessions for personal gain, approve of the devaluation of a university, and open up jobs for their friends and family once they secure a seat, and he wrote:

“And in this world, this cruelty
is thanks to you.
And if we are hungry, tired, and covered in blood
and if we are still being crushed like grapes to give our wine
the fault is yours,
— my tongue can barely bring itself to say it, but —
most of the fault is yours, my dear brother!”

Greetings to both the great poet Nazım and the honorable academics of Boğaziçi!