Demand for difference and privilege in the name of Boğaziçi University

In Turkey, the appointment of university rectors has historically been a difficult matter. There is a process that brought Turkey to the system currently in force. Before this, in elections held every 4 years in which university faculty chose among candidates, the top 6 were reported to YÖK; YÖK, paying no attention to the votes the candidates had received, made a selection and reported 3 persons to the President, and the President would appoint whomever he wished among these names, without being bound by them. An election it was, but the real election was made by YÖK, and the final selection by the President.

Meanwhile, what became of the faculty members' votes, does anyone remember? All that was left for the faculty members was to become the target of rectors elected with a handful of votes and to be thoroughly worn out in an academic environment that had become thoroughly politicized. In the rectoral election processes that began a year in advance, faculty members would completely suspend their academic activities for the sake of their rectoral and administrative goals. Even so, knowing that the vote they cast ultimately meant nothing, they were also engaged in separate lobbying at YÖK and at the Presidency. At that stage, the files the rivals were able to compile about one another turned into a race of informing. Our academic environment is not independent of the quality of our people, and these are not events so far in the past that we could already have forgotten them.

This situation, which made the election as meaningless as possible and virtually made a mockery of the faculty members, has been ended. With the presidential system, whenever the time for an election comes at a university, YÖK now announces for candidates, and in the research and interviews conducted by YÖK among the applicants, taking the university's characteristics into account and looking for the vision and qualities that will better develop and advance that university, the files of three of the most suitable candidates are again submitted to the President's discretion. It is a fact observed by the entire university community that this way at least prevents the unnecessary polarizations and cadre-building from which universities formerly suffered a great deal because of the elections, blocks rectors from discriminating between those who voted for them and those who did not, and has also stopped rectors from resorting to unnecessary cadre-building in order to fill posts with people who would vote for them. Of course, however, it is not closed to the search for a more perfect system.

Meanwhile, it must be noted that in the developed countries of the world there is no standard method set for the appointment of university administrators that is applied the same way everywhere. In this matter the essential thing has been to find a way that will ensure at once the university's autonomy, its efficiency, and that the knowledge produced there is directed toward seeking solutions to the country's problems.

In many developed countries, university administrators and rectors are appointed by boards of trustees that also include representatives from the public. Contrary to what is supposed, the participation of university faculty in elections is not required as a condition for ensuring academic autonomy.

In fact, in many of them the elected rectors do not even have to be of academic origin. There are views and practices holding that the management of universities by a professional manager or administrator increases their efficiency and effectiveness further. Indeed, it can even be said that in Turkey's 210 universities, professor-level academics, each of whom would be hard to replace in his own field, are kept from working in their fields by being tied to a post like the rectorship. Of course, this is not now an item on the agenda concerning our universities.

Boğaziçi University is also a state university, and the same procedure as for other universities was followed in the selection of its rector. Universities are of course autonomous, but they are not independent of the state or of the country's general conditions, nor above them. Like every higher education institution, this university too is subject to the supervision of Turkey's Higher Education System in its work and to the audit of the Court of Accounts in its spending.

Many professors applied to the announcement made to replace the previous rector, whose term had ended. Among the applicants, Prof. Melih Bulu was appointed by our esteemed President, with the authority the law grants him, as the most suitable name for Boğaziçi University both because of his educational career and because of the posts he took on and successfully carried out after his education. In making this assessment our esteemed President took into account the candidate's academic career and his qualities that would carry one of our country's rare educational institutions, such as Boğaziçi University, forward.

Do those who object to his appointment object to this system itself, or do they demand that Boğaziçi have a separate status? On this matter the protesters seem to have heads and rhetoric in a thorough muddle, far below the high intelligence attributed to Boğaziçi University. Sometimes they object to the system itself and try to leap from this event onto a Gezi platform. That nearly all of those caught in the first protest actions were members of radical leftist organizations, and the protest styles that continued afterwards, show this sufficiently. These organizations take their ready-made slogans and banners and run to whoever says they have a protest.

But at the end of the day, the real claim that emerges from these actions and objections is that Boğaziçi University is different from the rest of Turkey and requires different treatment. It demands that an identity and stance claiming to be alienated, in its language and culture, from the whole country be recognized through a difference in the rector appointment procedure. What is the origin of this demand for difference? A matter worth thinking about.

In the current system, in any case, the rector would have been chosen by the President by the same procedure; it could have been someone other than this one. Behind the objection displayed against Mr. Bulu, then, there is perhaps a reaction owing to the political identity attributed to him. In this case, the faculty members who issued a declaration against him are again acting out of another political motive. That is, their approach has nothing to do with science or the autonomy of science. They are not even aware that their own ideological and political understanding holds their own scientific understanding hostage.

In the end this amounts to saying that the rectors who govern Boğaziçi must openly be CHP members. Indeed, in the past the rectors of not only Boğaziçi University but of all universities had to be CHP members. They are demanding privilege in a spoiled manner, and they are demanding a return to the old days.