University youth

During the AKP government, there has been a rapid increase in the number of universities. The enrollment rate in higher education has risen to 46%.

The government, thinking it had seized a great opportunity through the youth, was enjoying the comfort of designing universities through partisan rectors, deans, and faculty members, but there was something it did not know.

University doors were not opening only to a professional future.

Those doors were also opening to enlightenment.

Moreover, our history was full of concrete evidence of this.

It was April 3-4, 1922. Students of the Istanbul Darülfünun (University of Istanbul) had decided on an indefinite boycott. They wanted the removal of the "mandate-supporting" teaching staff who opposed the War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal, and Turkishness, and even insulted them.

This action went down in history as the "Darülfünun Strike." It continued until the ties with faculty members named Ali Kemal, Cenap Şahabettin, Hüseyin Danış, Rıza Tevfik, and Marujan Barsamyan were severed.

The students had become the pioneers of independence and of taking ownership of the homeland and the nation.

However, the Darülfünun remained indifferent to the Revolutions that took place between 1924 and 1928. There were professors who opposed the alphabet revolution. All innovations were resisted.

On June 6, 1933, it was closed with the University Reform and Istanbul University was established.

This was a resurrection. It was a door opening to reason, science, civilization, and Enlightenment.

Throughout its history, Istanbul University has been a guide for the Republic and democracy. It never forgot the Rector, Ord. Prof. Dr. Sıddık Sami Onar, who was dragged on the ground by mounted police, nor the martyrs of the revolution.

Those who ignore the glorious struggles of universities and seek support for their own "vindictive youth projects" by opening universities in every corner of the country have forgotten one thing.

When students step through that door, they are not just learning science. They are also learning to break their own narrow molds, broaden their intellectual horizons, question, enjoy freedom, socialize, share the same desks with their female and male friends, and sip democracy.

University administrators who are deeply disturbed by this explain that they "trust the wisdom of the ignorant public" for this very reason, and the Presidency of Religious Affairs complains for this very reason that "young people are drifting away from religion in the environment of democracy and freedom in universities."

Because the university was also teaching young people, as the enlightenment philosopher Kant said, "to use their own reason."

While we continue to question the quality of education in universities, we have often missed the individual effects of the socialization created by being a university student.

We have experienced periods where we struggled to understand young people who learned to use their own reason.

It was the days when the Gezi Protests began. I was on the Kadıköy ferry. While watching the young people filling the ferry with flags in their hands, the words of a female student left an indelible mark on my soul.

"You," the young girl was saying, "thought we were indifferent to the country's problems, selfish, and addicted to social media. Yet, we are sensitive to all the problems of the country."

How right she was... For years, they had been squeezed into "generation" debates created by sweeping generalizations and accused of being apolitical.

Politics had only remembered them during elections.

While some focused the problems of the youth on economic issues such as "food, jobs, and dormitories," others tried to capture their brains and souls by using their beliefs.

While squeezing young people into this two-poled process, they could not prioritize learning what kind of "Turkey" they wanted, their intellectual worlds, and their perspectives on events—in other words, they could not prioritize "respecting" them.

Yet, history is full of many young leaders and inventors.

Fatih Sultan Mehmet was 21 when he conquered Istanbul. He did not just conquer Istanbul; he also brought an end to the Middle Ages.

We live in a world where Bill Gates invented Microsoft at 20, and Larry Page invented Google at 21.

It is possible to multiply these examples. We are also aware that our young people achieve success when given the opportunity.

However, for some reason, we cannot find broadcasters who want to bring the views of a young person in their 20s to the public among the people who occupy TV screens for days and nights and whose words are known in advance.

We speak on their behalf, and we interpret their behavior ourselves. Sometimes we see them as votes likely to be cast into a political party's ballot box.

We are going through days where we need to correctly read that their breaking through barricades and filling the squares like a flood carries the determination to "uphold democracy," and that they do not want politics to shape them, but rather they want to shape the future of the country.

Respecting the courage, determination, risk-taking potential, and idealism of our youth and enriching politics with their thoughts will be the sign of finding a way out of the bottleneck.

The high foresight behind Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's entrusting the Republic and independence to the youth has been proven once again.

It is time to move beyond protecting the youth and set out to understand them, value their views, and respect them.