Call from Ümit Özdağ regarding academic salaries: 'An academic struggling to make ends meet cannot conduct scientific research'

Zafer Party Chairman Ümit Özdağ, in a statement made via his social media account, harshly criticized the current state of universities. Bringing the demands for academic, administrative, and financial autonomy back to the agenda, Özdağ drew attention to the arbitrary practices and decay occurring in universities.

Özdağ used the following expressions in his statement:

"As the Zafer Party, we have stated repeatedly before: Universities must urgently be granted academic, administrative, and financial autonomy and freedom. Serious measures must be taken before the rampant appointment irregularities and allegations of fraud rot the entire academic system. In Turkey, there is no job security in foundation/private universities. University administrations fire staff arbitrarily. In state universities, while job security can be mentioned outside of the 50d research assistant staff, it is observed that mobbing is becoming increasingly institutionalized."

Stating that the structural problems in universities cannot be solved solely by salary increases, Özdağ emphasized that low salaries directly affect scientific productivity. Highlighting the financial difficulties experienced especially by young academics, Özdağ warned against the injustice in salaries:

"The problems of universities cannot, of course, be solved merely by raising salaries. However, it is not possible to get real academic efficiency in a university with these salaries. The pyramid in the academic staffing structure has been reversed. We are moving toward a point where we could almost say we have more professors than research assistants. Research assistant positions are the dynamos of research. Research assistant positions should be increased in proportion to the research performance of the units. Today, a research assistant's salary is around 74 thousand, which is below the poverty line. A professor's salary, on the other hand, is 112 thousand TL, just above the poverty line. An academic struggling to make ends meet cannot conduct scientific research, and they also struggle to carry out educational activities. It is essential that salary balances in the public sector be reviewed and reorganized. A professor's monthly salary should be the TL equivalent of 4,500 dollars. Other academic salaries should be adjusted accordingly."

Özdağ also stated that the academic incentive system should be restructured based on merit. He expressed that it is essential to increase additional payments based on scientific outputs such as publications, patents, and projects.

Reminding that science and technology are strategic values for countries, Özdağ gave a striking example by stating that a technology developed in Turkey was claimed by other countries:

"Meaningful additional payments should be made to faculty members and instructors with a system more merit-based than the currently applied academic incentive criteria, according to the research projects they are conducting in line with their fields of study, the qualified publications they produce, patents, and educational materials. Our country's rise can only happen through science, and the locomotive of science is universities. I present this to your attention as an example: Erdal Arıkan, who invented 5G, is a professor at Bilkent University. He discovered 5G in Turkey, then China found the article and invested 600 million dollars in Professor Erdal's article and made 500 billion dollars from this business in 10 years. China is making money from 5G, which the Turkish academic invented while residing in Ankara. No, this is not a joke!"

Özdağ concluded his statement with a call for academic autonomy, merit-based management, and science-based development:

"In a Turkey where merit-based management, academic autonomy, and science are taken as the basis, Turkey can be the winner with qualified scientific research, R&D investment, and activities. It is time to seriously address the justified salary demands of academics."