Turkey steps up crackdown on university protests with hundreds of arrests

The Turkish executive led by the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, continues to repress all kinds of protests and to persecute all opponents who stand up to the government. In recent hours, the repression of university protests launched in January to raise their voices against the imposition of Melih Bulut, closely linked to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), as rector of Istanbul's Bosphorus University, founded in 1863 and the most prestigious university in the country, has increased without elections having been held to select him. 

During the protests on Monday and Tuesday, police detained at least 230 people, most of them students, according to eyewitnesses. The security forces dispersed the students from inside the university campus, and also did not allow students to come and stand in solidarity with their fellow students and assaulted them. The protesters confronted the police chanting slogans such as "Let the police leave" and "The universities are ours".

The student movement is going strong against the Recep Tayyip Erdogan government's attempts to increase control over universities.

Protests by professors and students against Bulut have taken place in front of the Bosphorus University rectorate almost every day since 4 January, with occasional events in other Istanbul neighbourhoods. 

The executive discredited the university protest, which the Turkish leadership attributed not to Bosphorus students but to "fringe groups", "anarchists" and "provocateurs".

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 Peoples' 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, continues. The CHP itself provided lawyers for the university students arrested in the latest protests. 

Also on Tuesday evening, social and student organisations had called for a demonstration in Kadiköy, a district on the Asian side of Istanbul. However, the government banned all demonstrations in this district and those near Bosphorus University for a period of seven days, citing the risk of contagion from the COVID-19 pandemic. Several hundred students, as well as members of trade unions and leftist parties, also gathered in Kadiköy where police suppressed the protest by firing plastic bullets and tear gas. 

According to opposition media, several people were injured and dozens were arrested. Another solidarity demonstration in the capital, Ankara, was also repressed by the police, who arrested at least six people linked to the Students' Initiative university union.

HDP member Ali Babacan said the violent response to the student protests is unacceptable and unjustified. Babacan explained that the recent events at Bosphorus University are of concern to everyone, noting that the internal policies created by the government through polarisation and conflict have begun to cause great harm to the country, according to the Turkish daily Zaman.

"The government, which cannot solve any of the country's problems, is completely preoccupying the people through hostilities," he added. "The government and the pro-government press are creating an environment for different segments of society to confront each other. This is a very dangerous situation. Those who run the country must be aware of this and everyone must act wisely."

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.