Have you ever seen the government as the opposition?

It is quite clear that Turkey still has not arrived at a good method for the selection of university rectors. But where we have come from here is also known. Let us speak plainly: demanding an "election" in the appointment of a rector, by itself, amounts to demanding nothing at all. After all, we have an experience full of tons of examples of what elections conducted in the "let friends see it at the market" manner have done to universities.

Who takes part in the elections is also both very important and a matter on which there is no ideal model either. As a result of elections in which all the faculty members took part, what remained was only the profile of a faculty member who had it thrown in his face that the vote he cast was of no use, and who was in fact humiliated far more in this way. First the YÖK and then the President again decided as he wished.

Moreover, when did those who are raising the roof today over the rector selected for Boğaziçi ever have rectors of their own that were elected? It turns out that the selection of their rectors took place by other ways, but neither the students nor the faculty members ever had any worth in the eyes of the powerful. It turns out only that it was not the President but other centers of tutelage that selected and appointed their rectors. If we cannot read this too from the latest developments, cannot understand it, then let us not bother to make political analysis, nor sociology, nor demand any democratic right.

An academic, a Boğaziçi graduate whom I have known for a long time and respect very much, is deeply resentful of the President's appointment of a rector to Boğaziçi University and is strongly on the opposition side on this matter. Because of what I have written on the subject, he insistently asks why I have not written about the fact that the rector's thesis is not open to examination on YÖKSİS. And I state very clearly: Is that the issue? Is what I have done, or indeed the most important stance displayed on this matter, the defense of the current rector? To begin with, Prof. Melih Bulu's thesis did not come onto the agenda at the start but only after the protests on this matter had advanced considerably. When the time comes that too will be discussed; it is not undiscussable; if there is a real problem, no one will be defending it. But the issue is not that now. In fact the issue is not even the rector. The rector is merely a pretext.

In the past, the rector of Boğaziçi was appointed neither by the university's students nor by its faculty members. According to a legend going around, the faculty members would settle on someone among themselves and that name would be communicated to the YÖK, and the YÖK and the President generally would not object to it and would appoint him, and thus the university would preserve its originality and autonomy.

What kind of legend is this? If this is not confessing one's theft while displaying valor, while imagining it a virtue, then what is it? Does this legend not depict an entirely different system within Turkey, a privileged practice entirely independent of Turkey?

What made this practice privileged, on what this institution based its privilege, was confessed far more openly in recent days by the US State Department Spokesman Ned Price: "We are closely following the peaceful protests against the appointment of a new rector to Boğaziçi University," said Price, who did not neglect to add: "We are concerned by the detention of students and other protesters and strongly condemn the anti-LGBTQI rhetoric surrounding the demonstrations."

Where does the immediately recurring Boğaziçi sensitivity of the US, which has returned from the brink of virtually a civil war with its own people in its own country or is under that threat at any moment, come from? Should we not draw some meaning from the fact that the US spokesman, from whom we heard not a single statement while hundreds of Cairo University students lost their lives in broad daylight to police sniper fire, drops everything and takes such an interest in the results of the rector selection at Boğaziçi University?

It turns out that until now the authority to select a rector for Boğaziçi University lay neither with the President of the Republic of Turkey nor with the university's faculty members or students. The authority lay with the relevant institutions of the US. As if confirming this, the Cumhuriyet and Sözcü portals, from ODA TV, began to voice with a single mouth, and as if threatening, that if the President insists on this action the US could seize Boğaziçi University. From this hour on, no one can claim that appointing a rector to Boğaziçi concerns only the university's freedom and autonomy. The matter has now become a question of Turkey's character and independence, and of course, as always, the President has shown how farsighted he is on this matter too. He has evidently seen very well which wheel he will stick his stick into and where.

The issue is of course not only the rector issue.

But if only those who, in the name of Islam, fell for the allure of "opposition to power" (anti-capitalist Muslimhood at Gezi) and opened their eyes precisely on the front of global power and the finance capitalists, could see this too.

Because Erdoğan represents power, those who stone this power do not see that the fight is in fact a global one and that the only real opposition in the world against global power is Erdoğan. Before they know it, on one side of them is the US, on another the finance capitalists, before them the HDPKK, which is again their lackey, and behind them the CHP, which has never had the slightest respect for their own headscarves and values, and the FETÖ trolls who applaud them at every level and prompt them their lines.

An Islamist father, who keeps grieving because his child has happened to take a place in these protest ranks, turns around and, almost in tears, tries to persuade his child: "All right, my child, there is a generation gap between us, a gap in understanding, manners, experience; you may see some things differently from us, but does not even the US's involvement in this affair in this way wake you up?"

My young Muslim brother, they came to you in all sorts of languages, they are coming, they will come. Have you fixed your eyes on the horizon, have you looked from the globe, have you seen from there who the tyrannical, imperialist, colonialist power is, and who its real opposition is?