Jigs
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Thursday, December 9, 2010
İZGİ GÜNGÖR
ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News
The angry government response to recent student protests has been intolerant, various experts have said, also citing economic factors as major reasons behind the demonstrations.
“We have to first understand the students’ living conditions to judge their actions. They live in economically hard conditions and they don’t see a bright future for themselves due to the unemployment problem,” Alpaslan Işıklı, the president of the Association of Academic Staff, or TÜMÖD, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
“University fees are too high and [students] think they are being made into customers of universities and that universities are commercialized,” Işıklı said. “Maybe they can’t express this clearly, but these are the reasons behind their protests.”
The increasing number of student protests recently has been accompanied by rising tension between government officials and students over the demonstrations and alleged police brutality against protesters.
Eighteen university students were recently sentenced to 15 months in prison for protesting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at Istanbul Technical University two years ago.
On Saturday, university student groups protesting a meeting in Istanbul between the prime minister and university rectors, demanding their right to be present at the meeting, were allegedly met with excessive use of force by police. Students protesting that incident Wednesday at Ankara University were pepper sprayed by police.
Prime Minister Erdoğan has called the police role in such protests justified and held the Ankara University administration responsible for Wednesday’s incident, during which students threw eggs at Burhan Kuzu of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Kuzu meanwhile called on the university’s rector to resign. The president of the Higher Education Board, or YÖK, was also among those who criticized Ankara University administrators.
A group of Anadolu University students previously threw eggs at Constitutional Court head Haşim Kılıç at a conference in Eskişehir in November.
‘Protest with eggs ordinary, not a crime’
“Protesting [by throwing] eggs has been accepted an ordinary way of protesting in the world. World leaders don’t react with anger,” Işıklı said. “It is wrong and an injustice to put all the blame on the rectors. The student organization that invited Kuzu as a speaker should be criticized... [and] Kuzu should have expected such an incident, as his guards came to the event with umbrellas.”
Both student and worker protests are typically triggered by economic troubles, said Ural Akbulut, the former rector of Middle East Technical University. “Most of the students usually come from different provinces and are from families with low incomes. They thus reflect their stress toward university administrators and politician, which is pretty natural,” Akbulut told the Daily News.
“Student protests that were much stricter than here were approached in a more moderate way in Greece,” he added. “Throwing eggs is not an act of violence. Those who stage protests are youth but the protested people are mature and should respond with maturity and tolerance.”
Akbulut also said rectors shouldn’t be blamed, as bringing eggs to school is not a crime and it is the duty of police to prevent such incidents, not rectors.
“The police should have done better body searches. The negligence belonged to the police,” he said.
Criticizing the students’ excessive anger and ambition, Ahmet Gündoğdu, head of the Education Personnel Labor Union, said there both the students’ protests and the police’s use of force in Istanbul were disproportionate.
“The eggs don’t kill people. But the way students threw eggs involved excessive ambition and anger, as if they were at war,” Gündoğdu said. “They should have let the speakers speak so that they could reveal their reactions through their questions.”
Protest part of democracy culture
Psychologist and social scientist Şükrü Alkan said students’ involvement in political action is a positive sign for democracy and protests are normal psychological responses.
“Throwing eggs is not an action that requires a police use of violence. Protests are warnings to politicians in a pedagogic sense... Students are simply protesting the administration’s hegemony over universities,” Alkan said. “The politicians should first question and understand the reasons behind these protests.”
“Students have a vision. They think and criticize. I have been in Germany for 25 years and I never witnessed police use of pepper gas against students. It is a fascist approach,” Alkan added.
“Throwing eggs is not an act of violence but a way of protest as long as it doesn’t harm the physical integrity of those protested,” said Yücel Sayman, a former president of the Istanbul Bar Association. He added that the prime minister’s remarks and approach to the protests are not proper, as he didn’t read the incidents correctly and has a faulty definition of freedoms
İZGİ GÜNGÖR
ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News
The angry government response to recent student protests has been intolerant, various experts have said, also citing economic factors as major reasons behind the demonstrations.
“We have to first understand the students’ living conditions to judge their actions. They live in economically hard conditions and they don’t see a bright future for themselves due to the unemployment problem,” Alpaslan Işıklı, the president of the Association of Academic Staff, or TÜMÖD, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
“University fees are too high and [students] think they are being made into customers of universities and that universities are commercialized,” Işıklı said. “Maybe they can’t express this clearly, but these are the reasons behind their protests.”
The increasing number of student protests recently has been accompanied by rising tension between government officials and students over the demonstrations and alleged police brutality against protesters.
Eighteen university students were recently sentenced to 15 months in prison for protesting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at Istanbul Technical University two years ago.
On Saturday, university student groups protesting a meeting in Istanbul between the prime minister and university rectors, demanding their right to be present at the meeting, were allegedly met with excessive use of force by police. Students protesting that incident Wednesday at Ankara University were pepper sprayed by police.
Prime Minister Erdoğan has called the police role in such protests justified and held the Ankara University administration responsible for Wednesday’s incident, during which students threw eggs at Burhan Kuzu of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Kuzu meanwhile called on the university’s rector to resign. The president of the Higher Education Board, or YÖK, was also among those who criticized Ankara University administrators.
A group of Anadolu University students previously threw eggs at Constitutional Court head Haşim Kılıç at a conference in Eskişehir in November.
‘Protest with eggs ordinary, not a crime’
“Protesting [by throwing] eggs has been accepted an ordinary way of protesting in the world. World leaders don’t react with anger,” Işıklı said. “It is wrong and an injustice to put all the blame on the rectors. The student organization that invited Kuzu as a speaker should be criticized... [and] Kuzu should have expected such an incident, as his guards came to the event with umbrellas.”
Both student and worker protests are typically triggered by economic troubles, said Ural Akbulut, the former rector of Middle East Technical University. “Most of the students usually come from different provinces and are from families with low incomes. They thus reflect their stress toward university administrators and politician, which is pretty natural,” Akbulut told the Daily News.
“Student protests that were much stricter than here were approached in a more moderate way in Greece,” he added. “Throwing eggs is not an act of violence. Those who stage protests are youth but the protested people are mature and should respond with maturity and tolerance.”
Akbulut also said rectors shouldn’t be blamed, as bringing eggs to school is not a crime and it is the duty of police to prevent such incidents, not rectors.
“The police should have done better body searches. The negligence belonged to the police,” he said.
Criticizing the students’ excessive anger and ambition, Ahmet Gündoğdu, head of the Education Personnel Labor Union, said there both the students’ protests and the police’s use of force in Istanbul were disproportionate.
“The eggs don’t kill people. But the way students threw eggs involved excessive ambition and anger, as if they were at war,” Gündoğdu said. “They should have let the speakers speak so that they could reveal their reactions through their questions.”
Protest part of democracy culture
Psychologist and social scientist Şükrü Alkan said students’ involvement in political action is a positive sign for democracy and protests are normal psychological responses.
“Throwing eggs is not an action that requires a police use of violence. Protests are warnings to politicians in a pedagogic sense... Students are simply protesting the administration’s hegemony over universities,” Alkan said. “The politicians should first question and understand the reasons behind these protests.”
“Students have a vision. They think and criticize. I have been in Germany for 25 years and I never witnessed police use of pepper gas against students. It is a fascist approach,” Alkan added.
“Throwing eggs is not an act of violence but a way of protest as long as it doesn’t harm the physical integrity of those protested,” said Yücel Sayman, a former president of the Istanbul Bar Association. He added that the prime minister’s remarks and approach to the protests are not proper, as he didn’t read the incidents correctly and has a faulty definition of freedoms
