display
For the first time in years, Istanbul is experiencing major street protests to which the state has responded with tried and tested methods: tear gas, rubber bullets, police helicopters in the city center.
The protests reached their preliminary climax on Wednesday when a demonstration was smothered with massive violence in Istanbul's Kadiköy district, the urban center of the Anatolian side of the city.
The ostensible trigger is a conflict over the renowned Bosporus University.
The sight of the campus could arouse the suspicion that this is an elitist establishment: Located in the posh Bebek district, built in a symbiosis of American college style and late Ottoman architecture, with a picturesque view of the strait between Europe and Asia, after which it is named: Bogazici-, so Bosporus University.
It was founded in the mid-19th century as the first US college outside the USA;
In 1971 it was converted into a state university.
Today it is not an expensive private university for rich people's children, but an excellent university that selects its students based on achievement.
No other Turkish university does as well in global comparisons as the Bosporus University.
display
At the same time, it has preserved the American-liberal tradition;
Professors of different political backgrounds research and teach at the university, and campus is just as liberal.
Aside from the Technical University of the Middle East in Ankara, it is the only one that has been spared the wave of purges and the authoritarianization of the atmosphere in recent years.
That should change now.
As a journalist who is particularly close to the government put it, the Bosphorus University is to be “freed from American influence”.
And from above, by a new rector.
A few years ago, the professors chose three applicants from among their number, from which the university board had to choose one.
In the state of emergency that followed the attempted coup in July 2016, a decree was promulgated giving the president the last word.
In addition, they no longer have to consider internal elections, but can appoint someone at their own discretion.
The result of this appointment policy: Of the six university professors who Recep Tayyip Erdogan had appointed up to the summer of last year, one was able to report two publications in internationally recognized specialist journals.
One came up with one publication, four with none.
Students protest against the new rector - and thus against Erdogan
Melih Bulu is to become the new rector of the prestigious Bosporus University in Istanbul - President Erdogan decreed this.
The students disagree - and clash with the police.
Source: WORLD
display
These chosen ones, whose loyalty to Erdogan is less controversial than their professional qualifications, were all installed in the Anatolian province.
At the end of last year it hit an established university for the first time: Erdogan decreed that the business administration professor Melih Bulu should become the new rector of the Bosphorus University.
The police use tear gas against protesters
Source: Getty Images
An affront for professors and students at Bosporus University, who not only reject Bulu unanimously because of his membership in the ruling AKP party, but also question his academic qualifications.
You use a term that Turkey has come to know in connection with the dismissal of Kurdish mayors: “kayyum”, receivership.
Bulu was received with strong protests at the beginning of the year.
He was not a typical AKP man, he initially assured him, that he had previously been involved in social democracy and that he liked the heavy metal band Metallica.
He assured us that he would respect the “special character of the Bosporus University”.
But he soon allowed the security forces to take action against the peaceful demonstrators on campus.
During one of these operations, the police locked the entrance gate with handcuffs.
A symbolic image.
Metallica classics for the rector
display
Nevertheless, the protests retained a cheerful note.
Students set up a sound system in front of Bulu's seat of the university management, from which they loudly played Metallica classics such as “Master of Puppets”.
Shortly afterwards they published a cover version "For Whom the Bell Tolls" with a new text: "We do not bow to the Kayyum, we do not give up - resign!"
In the meantime, Erdogan intervened, insulting the protesting students as "terrorists" in a tried and tested manner and accusing them of being "narrow-minded" and "lazy".
The students were anything but lazy.
As part of their protest, they began organizing events, including an art exhibition, that were unwilling to escalate.
They called on artists and graphic designers to contribute to this exhibition.
Then they received several hundred exhibits.
Below is an anonymously submitted picture showing the Great Mosque of Mecca, but the rainbow flag of the LGBT movement at the edge of the picture.
A welcome scandal for the government
In the eyes of the government, which has been using openly homophobic rhetoric since last year, a scandal - but a welcome one.
After all, students in Ankara and Izmir had already expressed their solidarity, criticism of the police's actions grew louder - and memories of the Gezi protests in spring 2013 were awakened in government circles.
Source: Getty Images
Back then, too, a local conflict over the planned demolition of a city park first developed into a mass protest against police violence and finally into a nationwide uprising in which millions of people took part - and Erdogan caused the greatest trauma of his term in office.
The coup attempt was the ultimate escalation of the conflict with its former ally, the organization of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.
Gezi, on the other hand, literally broke into the government out of the blue on a lukewarm day at the end of May.
No wonder, then, that this image, which an Islamist student association first became aware of, was gratefully accepted - and so fell back on a strategy that had proven itself at Gezi: to portray the demonstrators as "godless".
“We against them” - a popular pattern among authoritarian-populist politicians around the world.
The AKP organ "Yeni Safak" reported on the "LGBT shame" on Friday, Erdogan's communications director Fahrettin Altun spoke of a "perverted way of thinking and a lifestyle that wants to spoil our generations".
On Monday Erdogan praised his youngsters for being “not an LGBT youth”.
On the same day, the police stormed the campus and arrested around 150 people, including arrests in Izmir.
display
On Tuesday, a court sentenced two students to pre-trial detention on charges of “sedition”.
The Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu then tweeted a graphic with the official seal of the Interior Ministry.
It reads: “Should we show tolerance with the LGBT perverts?
Of course not!"
The short message service reacted with a measure, as previously only with Donald Trump: The tweet was hidden and blocked for forwarding because it "violated the Twitter rules on hate-promoting behavior".
But since it might be of public interest, it was not deleted.
On the same evening, the protests spilled over the university grounds for the first time.
Students and their supporters tried to demonstrate in the Kadikoy district, but were stopped by police force.
Independent journalists reported that they had been targeted, even members of parliament who wanted to protect themselves in front of the demonstrators were attacked, over 100 people were arrested in Istanbul and around 70 in Ankara.
One of the peculiarities of the Gezi protests was not only their cheerful openness, which was reflected in slogans such as "Down with some things!", But also that they united a wide variety of people: secular Kemalists and Kurds, leftists and liberals, football fans and LGBT Activists, Alevis and Muslims critical of the AKP and above all: many young people who had not been politically active until then.
"We reject homophobia"
A bit of it shines through in the current protest.
Conservative students published a video that received much attention.
Some criticize the picture in question as a violation of their religious values, others believe that it is covered by artistic freedom.
But everyone agrees: "We reject homophobia, we hold this discussion among ourselves, we condemn the arrest of our friends."
But quantitatively, the protests are still a long way from Gezi.
Only a few, mostly fellow students from other universities, have taken to the streets so far; most of them limit themselves to encouragement on social media.
The reason: fear.
At its core, Gezi was carried by a generation that, unlike previous ones, no longer grew up scared of the police.
But already in the course of the protests, which lasted until September, the cheerfulness disappeared.
At least five people were killed by police and a dozen lost an eye from tear gas grenades.
Towards the end the people no longer sang happily and defiantly “tear gas, olé!” As soon as the grenades were shot, but ran away.
Walls of fear
With the violent suppression of the Gezi protests, Erdogan and his allies began to raise walls of fear, which have since been drawn higher and higher.
Not all of those who took part in Gezi came from the urban middle class.
But bread was only marginally important; it was more about democratic participation - and freedom.
On the street were all those who saw themselves patronized, ostracized and threatened in their lifestyles by the already looming Islamic authoritarian rule.
Everything that sparked the protests back then is much more extreme today.
In addition, there is something new: the bad economic situation, not just since the Corona crisis.
That is why the extreme police and rhetorical violence follow a logic: to hold the walls of fear unconditionally.
Because if they should be torn down, the regime threatens an even stronger protest than in 2013: for freedom and bread.
Perhaps the police stifled the protest on Tuesday evening.
But maybe it also does the exact opposite.