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Turkish Student Protests Feed Anti-Erdogan Anger

In a regular protest against the rector appointed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has controlled Turkey since she was only one year old, Zeynep Kurbanzade, fenced in by riot police, stands with her university classmates.

The Bogazici University students, small in number, loud in voice and filled with a thirst for change, are posing a worrisome challenge to the 66-year-old Turkish leader, who has responded to the issue, reports AFP.

Their social media-driven initiative, now in its second month, has ominous echoes of the 2013 protests that started in defense of an Istanbul park before becoming a national movement for the religiously conservative Erdogan.

For the students, the selection as head of the prestigious Istanbul institution of Melih Bulu, a losing parliamentary candidate from Erdogan's ruling party who rejects charges of plagiarizing his doctoral thesis, was the last straw in a life packed with discontent.

“We are not happy with the economy, we are not happy with the growing pressure,” Kurbanzade, 19, told AFP outside the campus, which has been besieged by police barricades since the start of the year.

“Acts of femicide go unpunished, mobsters walk free from jail and are given the red carpet treatment, but our friends are detained because of a tweet. We don’t accept this,” she said.

Although detaining hundreds across Istanbul and at smaller solidarity protests in major cities like Ankara and Izmir, the police fired rubber bullets and tear gas.

The jailings and heavy-handed police practices remind us of the sweeping powers Erdogan has assumed after surviving a coup attempt in 2016, which was followed by a punitive social and political crackdown, although most are released quickly.

“A mood of discontent — from the presidential regime to the economic collapse — has found a new form of expression through Bogazici,” said Zeynep Gambetti, an associate professor of political theory at the university.

– Culture wars –

Erdogan agreed this month, after initially dismissing the demonstrations, to turn them into part of a larger cultural war being fought across Turkey's highly divided society.

He launched numerous verbal attacks on the LGBT community for the first time since taking power in 2003, blaming it for the demonstrations with a venom that attracted immediate condemnation from the US and the European Union.

“Don’t pay attention to what those lesbians say,” he told a group of female supporters last week, defending Bulu’s appointment as lawful.

The students have responded to Erdogan on the streets and on Twitter, with several who run the protests’ social media accounts jailed and charged with insulting the president.

“Kayyum Rektor Istemiyoruz!” (We don’t want a trustee rector) has become a rallying cry, a protest against Erdogan’s decision in 2016 to start picking the heads of universities.

For many students and professors, these appointments run similar to his naming of government trustees in place of dozens of mayors who have been dismissed or jailed for alleged links to outlawed Kurdish militants.

“What we need to discuss is autonomy at universities but we talk about detentions. Who benefits from the chaos? Not us,” said Tinaz Ekim, a professor of industrial engineering at the university.

– ‘An overreaction’ –

Ustun Erguder, who served two terms as Bogazici University’s elected rector in the 1990s, compared this standoff to the late 1970s, when left and right-wing militants clashed across the streets of Ankara and Istanbul.

Eventually the army seized power in a 1980 putsch, but even then the 158-year-old institution remained an island of stability, Erguder recalled.

“When I was a young academic in the 1970s, all the universities were in a state of war. Even under those circumstances, education at Bogazici continued uninterrupted,” Erguder told AFP.

“We could calm (the protests on campus) without the police, but today there’s an overreaction.”

Erguder said Bulu visited him in his home soon after being appointed.

“I told him how his predecessor won the hearts and minds, and advised him to build bridges. He carefully listened and took notes.”

Bulu told a pro-government newspaper last week: “I never think about resigning.”

– Strong headwinds –

Students face enormous headwinds, from the police's physical force, to the lack of a natural opposition leader, to their mistrust of other political parties.

For all these reasons, the US German Marshall Fund's Ozgur Unluhisarcikli said it was unlikely that the protests would expand.

“There is an understanding among opposition parties that mass protests lead to polarisation and galvanise Erdogan’s supporters,” said Unluhisarcikli.

One Western diplomat told AFP that he could detect “no sign so far” that the protests could broaden.

But for now, at least, the students and their supporters vow defiance.

“These youngsters live on the internet, see blocked websites, bans, detentions over a tweet, all sorts of pressure, so they feel compelled to channel their frustration in one way or another,” said political analyst Gurkan Ozturan, a Bogazici graduate.

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