16.12.2010

Eggs vs truncheons

The student movement in Turkey is militant, but mass involvement is hampered by a divided left, says Esen Uslu

The battle between leftwing students, protesting against the straightjacket imposed on the higher education system by the supreme education council (YOK) on the anniversary of its foundation rose to new heights late this year.

YOK was established by the military junta of 1980, and the logic of the military regime was to put an end to the revolutionary activity ingrained in the universities during the 60s and 70s. Implementing the junta’s agenda for higher education, YOK made the police an essential component of university life - far more important than the lecturers. What remained of the autonomy of university councils was eradicated. Administrations imposed by YOK were made to follow a thin and straight line.

Student participation in the running of universities became an anathema, and student unions or other organisations were banned. Any opposition to the dictats of YOK by students meant immediate expulsion, and any such activity by the faculty ended with sacking. A large number of lecturers, including internationally renowned professors with left or liberal leanings, were dismissed.

While the junta regime formally ended and civilian rule was established nearly three decades ago, YOK has acted as one of the main instruments of the Kemalist military and civilian bureaucracy. Essentially YOK was established as a bulwark against the “danger of communism” - the paranoia of the cold war years. But it has also assumed an important role in regards to other items on the Kemalist agenda. The Kurdish freedom movement and political Islam were deemed to be in conflict with the national interests of Turkey, and any such activity in the universities was severely punished. The banning of headscarves in universities in 1982 was part of the same agenda implemented by YOK.

Meanwhile, state-financed free university education was gradually replaced with pay-as-you-go private or foundation universities. These became the most sought after higher education establishments, and charge exorbitant fees. State scholarships, education credits, and state-funded cheap accommodation for university students were gradually phased out. Even those remaining state universities which provide considerably cheaper education charge fees under many guises, and those fees increase every year at a rate exceeding the annual inflation rate.

The quality of education and attainment levels are patchy. Just a few days ago the press reported that some language preparatory schools at newly formed universities in Anatolian cities and towns finished the last academic year with a 90% failure rate. Neither the university administrations nor YOK were prepared to hear the grievances of students, nor their opinions and ideas. The atmosphere of university life is still oppressive.

Accumulated problems

When the AKP (Justice and Development Party) was in opposition, one of its election promises was to curb the authority of YOK, especially with respect to the headscarf issue. In government for the last seven years, they have failed to keep this promise. Even in political Islamist circles they were blamed for cowardice and subservience to the military-civilian tutelage.

The government gradually replaced those on the YOK council and eventually gained the upper hand in the council. Prominent Kemalist rectors were replaced with Islamist ones, and the former rector of Istanbul university was detained and later charged with directing a plot for a military takeover. However YOK and the straightjacket it has imposed on higher education remained untouched. While the AKP government has halted implementation of the headscarf ban, it preferred not to alter the legislation which gave draconian powers to YOK. The bid to amend the constitution was turned down by the constitutional court in 2008 and that made it wary.

The AKP government was obliged to undertake a partial amendment of the constitution early this year in order to remove in-built Kemalist resistance in the courts and judiciary. However, the decision was made not to include reform of YOK and other “supreme councils” - the junta imposed legacies on public administration. During the campaign for the constitutional referendum, student grievances were used along with the promise of a brand new constitution which would follow the 2011 spring elections. So expectations were raised.

Student life has not improved a bit since the government’s success in the referendum, however. A court case that started two years ago against 18 students for protesting against the prime minister ended with convictions and sentences  of 18-months, suspended for five years. At the end of October, disciplinary proceedings against 50 students in Istanbul technical university - who staged a demonstration - saw suspensions of one year to 18 months. Students then erected a tent in front of the university gates in protest. There have been many similar incidents.

An impending general election, the anti-AKP mood and heightened expectations of reform has given an added impetus to the student movement. This led to the December 4 demonstration in front of the Dolmabahce palace - on the coast of the Bosporus in Istanbul - where the prime minister was due to meet the university rectors and top YOK officials. Students demanded representation but were turned down.

Scuffles in Istanbul

Organisers invited students from other cities. Early in the day the police stopped three buses with about 150 students on board at they approached Istanbul. Police penned them into a parking site, checked IDs and then informed them that they could not enter the city - in a blatant contravention of their constitutional rights. The students were having none of it. They poured out of the buses and staged an impromptu demonstration, which was brutally attacked using tear-gas and truncheon charges.

Istanbul students did march towards Dolmabahce. However, at a junction quite some distance from the palace, they were stopped and told to disperse. While organisers engaged in negotiations police chiefs, a scuffle broke out and once again teargas and truncheon charges followed. The police pressed their attack and chased the students onto the roads and into a nearby park. Some were captured, others were detained but all were badly beaten. A video of both incidents can be seen on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9vZaVD4600).

While the press carried extensive reports, the government and YOK took the attitude that the best form of defence is offense. They took the side of the police and their speeches were full of spite and venom against the students. Media reporting also came in for stick. However, once opposition parties joined in the debate some AKP members felt obliged to publicly distance themselves from police brutality.

A salvo of eggs in Ankara

The Istanbul attack greatly heightened tensions. Despite that, Süheyl Batum, new general secretary of the CHP (Republican People’s Party, the Kemalist party affiliated to the Socialist International), and Burhan Kuzu, a prominent AKP member of parliament and the head of constitutional commission, decided to grace the “Constitution in Turkey” conference at the Political Science Faculty of Ankara university with their presence. Police had been warned that demonstrations were likely on December 8 due to student opposition to the AKP government and CHP’s failure to clearly defend their rights.

The PSF was famous during the late 60s when a new generation of revolutionary leaders cut their teeth in politics. Many of those prominent leaders were dead by 1972, but their legacy survived into the revolutionary organisations of 70s and 80s. The hall where the conference was to be held was the venue of forums that shaped the student movement over those years. The mood of 68 has always been in the air there.

During the morning session Batum was booed and hissed. He left without having a chance to speak. Kuzu, the AKP MP, came to the rostrum amid boos and hisses, but was hit with a hail of eggs. His minders tried in vain to shield him with umbrellas. Kuzu insisted on staying on the rostrum, and in protest the students left the hall and gathered in the corridors. They kept him and his entourage trapped until a large group of plainclothes police and private security guards forced their way in to rescue him. The students were dispersed with teargas and truncheons.

The ensuing political hullabaloo has yet to subside. However the actual state of the student movement deserves closer attention. Even today, 30 years after the military takeover of 1980, there is no democratically elected student organisation open to the students of a faculty or a university, let alone a country-wide organisation.

The left political parties have tried to fill the vacuum by creating student organisations with a limited range and scope. Unsurprisingly, the multitude of groups, initiatives, collectives and unions with diverse political aims are unable to mobilise a large segment of the student body.

During the flag-waving nationalist demonstrations in the spring of 2007 almost all student organisations - except those under the direct control of the nationalist-Kemalist-junta - stood against them. However, they had differing attitudes to the headscarf issue. While some took the angle of individual freedoms, others took an anti-AKP and anti-Islamist stance.

In the last two years we have seen the anti-AKP stance gain momentum among those organisations. But as it gained momentum and the militancy of their activities increased, the level of mass participation reduced. Despite all the heightened expectations and politically charged atmosphere there were no mass demonstrations.

Divergent student left

While the European student movement has mobilised en masse, in Turkey students conspicuously lack such a movement. The political agendas of the left student groups were spread between quite divergent poles.

The extent of political divergence became apparent once more just a couple of days ago when the student group close to the ODP (Freedom and Democracy Party) attacked the poet Roni Margulies - who used to be a prominent member of the Socialist Workers Party in London, and nowadays is a columnist in the liberal Taraf daily in Turkey - with eggs and paintballs, at a conference where a Kurdish mayor, a representative of the Turkish minority in Greece and a prominent Greek human rights activist were also to speak.

Their pretext was that Roni has “attacked revolutionary values and dishonoured revolutionary dignity.” The Kurdish youth from the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) who were stewarding the conference clashed with them in the hall and outside. Then the attackers held a press conference, and claimed that when they tried to demonstrate they had been attacked by a lynch-mob.

Actually a similar attack on Roni was undertaken by the same group last year. At that time the leadership of the ODP defended the attack. This time, however, they have distanced themselves. It is apparent that important aspects of the divergence of political aims in the student movements focus on the Kurdish issue.

There are many voices on the left harking back to the legacy of 68, and talking up the importance of the recent upsurge of the student movement in breaking the hegemony of the established order. More sober evaluations come from those political forces who seek to convert student activism into political capital in the spring 2011 elections.

Let us hope that the independent spirit and zeal of the student movement leads them to a better political outlook, and steers them clear of the potholes laid in their way by the regime and its paraphernalia.