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
Hundreds flee to government-held areas in north Syria ahead of possible offensive
- Many of the civilians who fled used side roads to reach government-held areas
- Men, women and children arrived in cars and pickup trucks that were packed with bags of clothes
DEIR HAFER, Syria: Scores of people carrying their belongings arrived in government-held areas in northern Syria on Friday ahead a possible attack by Syrian troops on territory held by Kurdish-led fighters east of the city of Aleppo.
Many of the civilians who fled used side roads to reach government-held areas because the main highway was blocked with barriers at a checkpoint that previously was controlled by the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Associated Press journalists observed.
The Syrian army said late Wednesday that civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday. The announcement appeared to signal plans for an offensive against the SDF in the area east of Aleppo.
There were limited exchanges of fire between the two sides.
Men, women and children arrived in cars and pickup trucks that were packed with bags of clothes, mattresses and other belongings. They were met by local officials who directed them to shelters.
In other areas, people crossed canals on small boats and crossed a heavily damaged pedestrian bridge to reach the side held by government forces.
The SDF closed the main highway but about 4,000 people were still able to reach government-held areas on other roads, Syrian state TV reported.
A US military convoy arrived in Deir Hafer in the early afternoon but it was not immediately clear whether those personnel will remain. The US has good relations with both sides and has urged calm.
Inside Deir Hafer, many shops were closed and people stayed home.
“When I saw people leaving I came here,” said Umm Talal, who arrived in the government-held area with her husband and children. She added that the road appeared safe and her husband plans to return to their home.
Abu Mohammed said he came from the town of Maskana after hearing the government had opened a safe corridor, “only to be surprised when we arrived at Deir Hafer and found it closed.”
SDF fighters were preventing people from crossing through Syria’s main east-west highway and forcing them to take a side road, he said.
The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo, previously Syria’s largest city and commercial center, that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from three neighborhoods north of the city that were then taken over by government forces.
The fighting broke out as negotiations stalled between Damascus and the SDF over an agreement reached in March to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.
The US special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, posted on X Friday that Washington remains in close contact with all parties in Syria, “working around the clock to lower the temperature, prevent escalation, and return to integration talks between the Syrian government and the SDF.”
The SDF for years has been the main US partner in Syria in fighting against the Daesh group, but Turkiye considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkiye.
