Turkey increases illegal detentions of university students  

University protests in Turkey have been dragging on since 6 January, when students at Istanbul's prestigious Bosphorus University staged demonstrations against the new rector, Melih Bulut, who has been accused of links to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The university students demanded his resignation and denounced the disintegration of democratic norms in the country.  

More than 600 people have been arrested since the outbreak of the protests, according to the Turkish authorities. Most have been released and others placed under house arrest. However, the most significant case was the imprisonment of four people now awaiting trial for the protests in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul. The four protesters are charged with various offences, including damage to public property and terrorist propaganda. 

The protesters were supported by local residents, who began banging pots and pans and honking their horns in support of the student movement, which was joined by opposition MPs and civil society figures. Lawyers, artists and opposition figures also showed their support by repeating the hashtag #asagiyabakmayacagiz, "We will not lower our gaze". This sentence follows the reaction of a plainclothes policeman who, during Monday's demonstration in Bogazici, had ordered a student to "lower his eyes". 

Last year, the New York-based Human Rights Watch drew attention to these arrests with a report that focused on the statements of 16 people who had been forcibly detained by intelligence agents.  

Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to increase pressure on the opposition in the face of his party's political crisis due to the loss of support in the interior of the country, represented above all by the heavy defeat in the last municipal elections and the weariness of a certain part of the population, especially young people, with the authoritarian and radical Islamist policies of the executive and the difficult economic situation the country is going through.  

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's persecution of opponents, mainly people close to the Republican People's Party (CHP), which wrested power in the major cities of Istanbul and Ankara from Erdogan's AKP in the last municipal elections, and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), accused by the government of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is accused by the government of supporting terrorist acts in the south of the Eurasian country. The CHP itself provided lawyers for the university students arrested in recent protests.  

The Human Rights Centre of the Ankara Bar Association also issued a report last year on the enforced disappearance of seven people and filed a criminal complaint with the public prosecutor.  

"The trend of abductions and illegal detentions are on the rise, especially after the failed coup attempt in 2016. We have held several meetings with the Interior Ministry and parliamentary committees on our reports, and we hope that an effective investigation will be launched," Ozturk Turkdogan, chairman of the Ankara Bar Association's Human Rights Centre, told Arab News.  

According to Turkdogan, enforced disappearances were a common practice during the 1990s by intelligence agents against Kurdish civilians and leftists in Turkey and are now most likely carried out by an illegal structure within the state apparatus in order to suppress dissenting voices. 

The EU also expressed its concern today about Turkey's decision to arrest more than 700 people, mostly linked to the left and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in the last week as part of an investigation into alleged terrorist links. 

"The European Union is deeply concerned about the continued pressure against the HDP and several of its members, which has taken place lately with arrests, replacements of elected mayors, in what appear to be politically motivated prosecutions," a spokesperson for the European External Action Service (EEAS) said today.

"Any alleged offence or crime must be subject to due (judicial) process and the presumption of innocence must be safeguarded," said the EEAS spokesman, who called on Turkey, as a member state of the Council of Europe, to respect democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law. 

The Turkish president has no alternative. He must broaden his alliance and seek the support of other parties to stay at the helm, as a change of course does not seem feasible and the economic situation aggravated by the coronavirus does not help either. The opposition, for its part, must stand firm and withstand great political and judicial pressure, as well as agree on who will be its candidate to face Erdogan, something that will not be easy either. Victory depends on his ability to unite widespread discontent and represent a large number of minorities and identities that do not fit into the Turkey Erdogan is designing. Finally, the Eurasian country's president has the trump card of bringing forward the elections, a scenario that many analysts are contemplating, and which could provoke a rush in an opposition that must bring together numerous sensibilities.