Sitting on a prime position on the European side of the Bosporus is Boğaziçi University, Turkey’s most prestigious university. The institution counts amongst its alumni two of the country’s Prime Ministers and much of the country’s business class. As such, when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began the new year by appointing as rector Melih Bulu—an AK party insider—he broke the university’s long-standing tradition of electing its own rector. The custom was previously violated only once, during the 1980 military coup. Bulu’s appointment immediately sparked protests from the university’s faculty and students, who view the move by Erdoğan as an assault on the integrity of the institution. 

The response from the AK Party leadership and the Turkish authorities has been fierce. More than 800 students and faculty have been arrested, with many facing criminal charges and risking their own careers and wellbeing to make a stand against Erdoğan’s authority.  Many anxious AK Party members and government officials fear that Boğaziçi could lead to a level of unrest not seen since the Gezi Park protests in 2013, spilling over into wider subsections of Turkish society. The protests come at a time when poor economic performance and rising poverty are commonplace in the country. 

Turkish leadership has gone to great lengths to publicly denounce the protests, hurling virulently homophobic remarks against the protesters.  Turkey’s Interior Minister Soleyman Soylu, called the protesters “LGBTQ perverts” after students placed pro-LGBTQ+ artwork depicting the Kaaba alongside a rainbow on Boğaziçi’s campus grounds. In a relatively conservative society like that of Turkey, the government’s aim seems to be to sideline the protesters as “deviants” so as to delegitimise their demands. Erdoğan and his allies have a longstanding tradition of employing such tactics.

Much of Erdoğan’s rise can be attributed to his ability to give voice to the more conservative and historically marginalized Anatolian constituencies. During his nearly twenty-year tenure as the leader of Turkey, Erdoğan has sought to redefine the structures of Turkish society, dismantling the secular Kemalist order that was perceived by the more religious subsections of Turkish society as relegating them to second class citizenship. Whether through reinstating Hagia Sofia as a mosque, disempowering the secular elements of Turkey’s armed forces, or appointing pro-AKP rectors in the country’s institutions of higher education, Erdoğan has sought to revive an Islamic orientation within the country and do away with the secular foundations established by former leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk during his presidency in the first half of the twentieth century. 

What does the future hold? 

The appointment of Melih Bulu as rector is an attempt to redefine Turkey’s cultural future so as to cement the country’s conservative character. While Erdoğan has managed to purge the bureaucracy of much of its secular orientation and to empower a rising Anatolian business class, he must now contend with a future filled by uncertainty.

Erdoğan is seeking to manage this uncertainty, eyeing universities as the next battleground of his project to define the social character of the nation. Since coming to power, the AK Party has sought to elevate the character of the country’s religiously oriented secondary institutions known as Imam Hatip schools, from which Erdoğan himself graduated. Following the constitutional reforms of 2017, Erdoğan has had the authority to appoint and dismiss university rectors. All of this in combination has allowed Erdoğan and his conservative supporters to consolidate even more power.

Boğaziçi is a university with a strong secular orientation and thus remains a barrier to the AKP’s wider aspirations to remodel the social character of Turkey. Symbolised by the university’s location on the European side of the Bosporus, the left-leaning secular character of the university represents a future that stands in stark contrast to Erdoğan’s vision of Turkey. In seeking to suppress these protests, he has reanimated a longstanding tradition amongst Turkish universities for social activism, which have often been at the center of progressive political aspirations and pro-democratic tendencies. 

Can this be contained? 

Most recently, the newly appointed rector has carried out reforms with the support of Erdoğan to lock in his control of the university by creating two new faculty departments and staffing them with pro-AKP faculty, remaking the institutional composition of Boğaziçi. Regardless of what changes Mehli Bulu makes, he has virtually no support from the university’s faculty and student body. The targeting and closure of the university’s LGBTQ student association and the demonisation of its protestors have fuelled continued resistance.

Erdoğan’s goal to control the future of Turkey has seemingly backfired, spreading beyond Boğaziçi. Many universities across the country and the world have begun to partake in open defiance against the government. In a sign of desperation, the appointed rector of Boğaziçi claimed in a public statement that the protests were fueled by “Great Powers” and “spies on campus”, but failed to provide evidence of either.

As the backlash spreads beyond Boğaziçi, Erdoğan and his government must now contend with the reality that the costs for them to control Turkey’s future social orientation are much higher than previously calculated. The battle seems to have just begun. With presidential elections inching ever closer, Erdoğan’s attempt to manage this uncertain future may end up backfiring, as the universities vital to the country’s economic and social fabric hunker down in opposition.