ISTANBUL: Hundreds of Turkish students ignored police warnings and marched across Istanbul on Wednesday to protest President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s appointment of a loyalist as the head of a top university.
The second demonstration in three days against Erdogan’s pick for Bogazici University delivered a rare challenge to the Turkish leader since he cracked down on dissent after surviving a coup bid in 2016.
More than 1,000 people scuffled with police on Monday to protest Erdogan’s appointment of Melih Bulu — a losing candidate from the ruling AKP party in the 2015 general election — as rector of the prestigious public institution.
Turkish police responded by arresting 36 people in a series of raids that began in the early hours of Tuesday.
They then fenced off the university and handcuffed its gates to avert a planned rally by students and their supporters on Wednesday.
Organizers regrouped and decided to hold a protest march instead that they coordinated through social media.
Hundreds walked chanting and holding up slogans along the Bosphorus before boarding a ferry and crossing to the Asian side of Istanbul for a rally attended by a crowd that AFP reporters estimated at more than 1,000.
Anti-riot police watched without intervening along the route.
“To walk together on such a day of defiance makes us feel very good,” said student Zehra Aydemir.
“I am proud that my friends and I were able to meet up and fight for what we want,” added university graduate Cinar Cifter.
The march attracted a mixed but overwhelmingly young crowd that held up political posters and waved rainbow flags in support of LGBTQ rights.
Some danced around to the sounds of Metallica — an ironic refense to a TV interview Bulu gave Tuesday in which he claimed to listen to the US heavy metal group.
One placard referred to Erdogan as “Master of Puppets” — the name of a 1986 Metallica album and song — while another cited the band’s iconic refrain: “nothing else matters.”
Erdogan has not referred to the protests in public.
But Turkish officials are keen to avoid a repeat of 2013 Gezi Park protests that began as a defense of a small green space in the heart of Istanbul before morphing into the first serious challenges to Erdogan’s rule.
Erdogan’s ruling coalition partner Devlet Bahceli of the ultranationalist MHP party said the protests “need to be crushed” before they grow any further.
“Those who are trying to strangle Turkey by taking this rector’s nomination as an excuse are terrorists’ pawns and separatists dressed as students,” Bahceli said Wednesday.
The protesters were “trying to create a new Gezi uprising,” Bahceli said.
Rectors for Turkey’s universities were appointed through elections from the 1990s to July 2016.
Bogazici University has traditionally been a stronghold of leftist causes that made into a government’s target on past occasions.
Several of its students were arrested after a demonstration against Turkey’s military offensive in Syria in 2018.
Students march in Istanbul against Erdogan university pick
https://arab.news/4wt76
Students march in Istanbul against Erdogan university pick
- The second demonstration in three days against Erdogan’s pick for Bogazici University delivered a rare challenge to the Turkish leader
- More than 1,000 people scuffled with police on Monday to protest Erdogan’s appointment of Melih Bulu
Iran unrest persists, top judge warns protesters
- Demonstrations sparked by soaring inflation
- Western provinces worst affected
DUBAI: Iran’s top judge warned protesters on Wednesday there would be “no leniency for those who help the enemy against the Islamic Republic,” while accusing Israel and the US of pursuing hybrid methods to disrupt the country.
The current protests, the biggest wave of dissent in three years, began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar by shopkeepers condemning the currency’s free fall.
Unrest has since spread nationwide amid deepening distress over economic hardships, including rocketing inflation driven by mismanagement and Western sanctions, and curbs on political and social freedoms.
“Following announcements by Israel and the US president, there is no excuse for those coming to the streets for riots and unrest, chief justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, was quoted as saying by state media.
“From now on, there will be no leniency for whoever helps the enemy against the Islamic Republic and the calm of the people,” Ejei said.
Iranian authorities have not given a death toll for protesters, but have said at least two members of the security services have died and more than a dozen have been injured.
Iran’s western provinces have witnessed the most violent protests.
“During the funeral of two people in Malekshahi on Tuesday, a number of attendees began chanting harsh, anti-system slogans,” said Iran’s Fars, news agency.
After the funeral, Fars said, “about 100 mourners went into the city and trashed three banks ... Some started shooting at the police trying to disperse them.”
The semi-official Mehr news agency said protesters stormed a food store and emptied bags of rice, which has been affected by galloping inflation that has made ordinary staples increasingly unaffordable for many Iranians.
