Goodbye Eskişehir 2

I wrote an article last week. 

On the subject of “Goodbye Eskişehir”.

So many people called and asked that writing a second one became a necessity.

But I will not write a third.

That can be better written by the sluggish elders of Eskişehir, who were personally involved in the process and who say “my master to those who arrive, my pasha to those who leave.”

Those who welcome every incoming administrator with a bouquet of White Chrysanthemums in their hands.

Thank God they didn't have the courage to pour water behind them as they left.

Anyway, since my dear brother Ali Baş, the most famous journalist in Eskişehir, and my brother Arif also stepped into the fray, I wanted to refresh memories.

I, too, had forgotten many important events.

I remembered when friends and my esteemed professors called on the phone and poured their hearts out.

It turns out people were so full of grief. 

There were even those who shed tears.

Especially watching Anadolu University collapse and being unable to speak up upset them.

Being unable to raise enough of a voice against the takeover of the institution they grew up in by the minority from Pennsylvania caused them great sorrow.

They gave so many details that it could only be handled with a documentary.

Otherwise, it is obvious that two columns won't suffice.

The most critical points where all the accounts intersect are:

A professor hired to the university one month before the coup receiving a prison sentence of more than 10 years for terrorism—it is very rare for even those at the very top of the network to receive such a sentence.

Who was this Hashshashin?

Who provided the reference?

Who insisted?

What was the real goal?

Of course, everyone knows.

The cologne-selling but influential brother-in-law.

Almost all the professors in the most intimate unit of the university being sentenced to prison for terrorism and dismissed from public service via statutory decree (KHK),

The effort, time, and money spent on a nonsensical project like URAYSİM, which has no clear purpose, no foundation, no theory, no team, no practice, and no future, as if it were conceived overnight.

Seeing our country's apple of the eye and most strategic institution as a cash cow and ruining its management structure with a proxy system.

The hideous pile of scrap metal parking project that is now being put up for sale by MKE.

Especially the transfer of incompetent academics from certain universities—where the real culprit here is the university itself for not updating its appointment criteria according to the spirit of the times, whereas institutions like METU and ITU updated theirs in advance and fended off the occupation,

The “you’d love them if you knew them” close relationship entered into with social media phenomenon rectors whose tenure did not exceed 6 months.

The close circle of the administrator who was dismissed before even 40 days had passed.

And so much more.

Conclusion.

An era has ended.

The children of Eskişehir paid a heavy price for chasing after unknown deviants instead of their Great Professors like Prof. Orhan Oğuz, Prof. Yılmaz Büyükerşen, and Prof. Engin Ataç—who offered them unlimited opportunities and resources, paved their academic paths, enabled them to climb the social ladder, and shone a light—by having their institutions occupied, much like the Papua New Guinean natives who bow to the wig-wearing lads of the British Monarchy.

The Second Republican Professors, the Shortsighted Professors, and the Corporate Professors joined forces with the mulberry-cheeked, orange-bellied Neanderthals from across the ocean to form their own Voltron.

They showed no mercy while destroying the universities that were the source of their rise from the outskirts of various cities in the country, arriving in Tofaş cars with gas tanks, only to end up in villas with Mercedes in the driveway, all while sipping their whiskey.

When those who should have spoken up remained silent, the inevitable end arrived.

Since a foundation university could not be established in Eskişehir, the experienced professors of years, who had flourished with the generous resources of Anatolia, had to buy combined tickets for the high-speed train.

I hope a foundation university will be established soon so that the returns can begin.

At least the exodus of the remaining scientific intellectuals will stop.

A foundation university is not too much to ask for this city, which is the center of the region and the locomotive of republican industry.

It is not even enough for a city that gave birth to five daughters from its womb: ESOGÜ, Kütahya Dumlupınar, Bilecik Şeyh Edebali, Afyon Kocatepe, and ESTÜ.