Erdogan at an embarrassing position

For more than a month, university students in Turkey have been demonstrating against the appointment of a close associate of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party at the head of a prestigious university in Istanbul. 

The continuation of these protests, which the authorities confronted with the deployment of security forces, is an embarrassment to the Turkish president, especially in light of his desire to improve his country’s relations with the West in addition to the economic crisis that Anatolia is going through.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded by deploying security forces on the streets. Although they do not seem to have the support of the majority of Turks at present, these demonstrations have commemorated the vast protest movement that shook Erdogan’s rule in 2013.

The Turkish president, who has not hesitated to crush any form of rebellion immediately since the failed coup in 2016, chose confrontation, but is embarrassed between his desire to repair relations between Ankara and the West as his country is going through an economic crisis.

And the protest movement was launched when he decided Erdogan The appointment of a loyalist of his party as president of the prestigious Bosphorus University (Bogazici) in Istanbul early this year.

The choice of this official accused of plagiarism was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many young people who know only one leader of their country, Erdogan, who came to power in 2003.

“We are not satisfied with the economic situation, nor with the increasing pressure” on individual freedoms, said Zainab Karbanzadeh, 19, who is participating in the protests.

This student explains that “perpetrators of murderous women who have gone unpunished and gangsters get out of prison and are treated like princes, but our comrades are being put behind bars because of a tweet,” stressing, “We reject that.”

Today the campus of Bogazici University looks like a besieged fortress. Metal barriers have been erected hundreds of meters across while a video of police shackling the university entrance gate last month sparked outrage.

Security forces also fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protest rallies in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir and arrested more than 500 protesters.

Although most of the arrested students were released, the arrests and the brutality of the security forces led to fresh accusations against Erdogan of a tendency to tyranny.

Zainab Gambetti, a professor of political science in Bogazici, says that this university “has crystallized many points that arouse discontent with the presidential system (which was introduced in 2018 and expanded Erdogan’s powers) to the collapse of the economy.”

After seeming to ignore the protests at first, Erdogan has stepped up his attacks on the protesters in recent weeks, describing them as tools “in the hands of terrorists” and Western powers.