Turkish scholars have said major changes will be needed to?restore the country’s higher education system after two decades of?deteriorating working conditions, freedoms and institutional autonomy under the presidency of?Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.
With the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections – held on 14?May – still unclear, whoever is victorious has a daunting task as, even before February’s devastating earthquake, Turkey has been stricken by relentless economic inflation and the tensions of an?ever more insecure region.
Academics and universities have come under intense political pressure from an increasingly authoritarian Mr Erdo?an, particularly those critical of the state or seen to be sympathetic to citizens in the country’s restive Kurdish region and the president’s sometime political rival, Fethullah Gulen.
In the week before the election, polls showed a for an opposition bloc led by Kemal K?l??daro?lu, leader of the Republican People’s Party and a?former civil servant once named “”.
While his big tent coalition has yet to hammer out the details of its higher education policy, it has caught the attention of Turkish academics, including those in the global diaspora, some of whom have vowed to return should the opposition win. A video from Istanbul’s embattled Bo?azi?i University, in which they commit to returning to Turkey, was retweeted by Mr K?l??daro?lu, who urged them to do so and said “this country needs you. Your dreams are my goal.”
But while the bookish Mr K?l??daro?lu might be a welcome change for many, Turkish scholars contacted by Times Higher Education said much deeper reforms were needed to get higher education back on track.
Zeynep Gambetti, a retired faculty member at Bo?azi?i, said top-down control of universities was Turkey’s biggest problem. She said the presidential power to appoint rectors, which Mr Erdo?an gained in 2018, needed to be reversed.
The Council of Higher Education, which was established by the military junta in 1982, should also be abolished, she said, echoing the position taken by Mr?K?l??daro?lu in 2018, when he as a “coup institution”.
“An intercollegiate board and science academies would be called upon to draft a new higher education law that ensures merit-based employment, freedom of research and teaching, as well as transparent and participatory governance structures for universities,” she said.
Taner Bilgi?, professor in industrial engineering at Bo?azi?i, said the wave of universities created under Mr Erdo?an had struggled to recruit because of the brain drain that has accompanied his rule, creating a severe shortage of academic staff and punishing workloads for those who stayed put.
“These universities still need faculty members to develop and establish their academic traditions. [The] return of expat academics to universities across the country might have a significant effect,” he said.
Elif Bal?n, an associate professor at San Francisco State University, said the university sector needed to be consolidated, particularly those institutions “where people without even master’s degrees teach and advise students”. But, she continued, more fundamental and cultural changes were required.
“Whenever I publish in Turkey, the editors ask me to ‘delete’ implications from the discussion of systemic, especially governmental, practices, even though they are directly linked to the research results,” Professor Bal?n said.
“I want to go back to a Turkey where parks like Gezi are not forbidden and true diversity of opinions is not suppressed,” she added, referring to protests in 2013 around an Istanbul park, which grew to accommodate deeper discontent about threats to the country’s secular foundations, established 100 years ago.
Professor Bal?n said she would wait to see if the next government made changes before considering her own return to Turkey, but she stressed that improvements should benefit all academics, not just returnees.
