Abolishing YÖK

YÖK Chair Prof. Dr. Yusuf Ziya Özcan has announced that work has begun to change YÖK's structure and logo. During the referendum debates over the constitutional amendment, one of the arguments, or pretexts, of the "No" camp was that the package did not include certain other things, for instance an article on abolishing YÖK, as though their stance would have been different otherwise.

Yet abolishing or changing the structure of YÖK was already one of the most important items on the agenda of the civil constitution work launched right after the 2007 general elections, which is when Prof. Özcan had already been appointed to head YÖK. Had a closure case not been filed against the AK Parti, the YÖK question, like many other issues, would have become a subject of broader debate and change. In an environment where changing the structure of the General Staff and turning it into a unit attached to the Ministry of National Defense is being contemplated, it is no longer conceivable to leave YÖK, or many of Turkey's other old institutions, as they were.

Still, we cannot help recalling a certain insincerity in the criticism of YÖK. For years, while YÖK served as the headquarters of every kind of anti-democratic practice, occupied itself with everything but science, and, instead of spreading university education across Turkey, tried to keep it a privilege that only certain circles could enjoy, the CHP did not let a speck of dust touch YÖK. In the days of Gürüz and Teziç, faculty members were barred from their profession over the topics of the theses they had written (Alev Erkilet, for example). Faculty members at universities were profiled one by one and subjected to prosecution according to their worldviews.

I know this because, as a faculty member in those years, I signed the circulars sent through YÖK to all universities, which contained explicit instructions to scholars about the subjects they should or should not work on, particularly the Kurdish, Armenian, reactionism (irtica) and similar issues. One of these circulars said, "it is observed with concern that some university members are criticizing the government" (this was in the time of the Ecevit government), and those who did so were forbidden from continuing, while those who persisted were intimidated.

In those same years, instead of working on a development strategy of expanding the capacities of the universities so that, if possible, no one who wanted an education would be deprived of it, YÖK busied itself with a stroke of genius like the "coefficient", which kept some people out of the universities. Yet instead of blocking people with the coefficient, it could have aimed, as today's YÖK does, to multiply universities and their quotas as far as possible and ultimately to give university education to everyone who wants it. Such a goal would have been both highly rational, with a direct contribution to the economy, and a peaceful goal aimed at making use of all of the country's human resources. But in that period YÖK was in no state to think about social peace; it seemed to have no mission other than stoking social hatred and conflict.

Nevertheless, during the period when YÖK was working like a headquarters that had declared war on its own people, we heard not the slightest criticism of YÖK from the CHP.

Yet today YÖK has undergone a fully paradigmatic change within itself. In the past, none of YÖK's excessive autonomy, indeed its willfulness, fell to the share of the universities, and especially of the scholars. Today, however, a paradigm has taken hold of YÖK that sees to it that individual universities, faculties, departments, faculty members and students receive their shares of autonomy. Moreover, by both increasing the quotas of existing universities and rapidly opening and developing new ones, higher education has clearly become more accessible to everyone.

The claim that the CHP criticized YÖK before and then shelved all its criticisms once it captured it is therefore not at all fair. In any case, the most important of the things to be done about YÖK concerned its management, even if it remained as it is. Without even touching the YÖK law, a difference of approach has produced a difference as big as mountains. YÖK's content has been entirely changed without YÖK being abolished. That is why completing this change by altering YÖK's logo, name and entire appearance is now child's play.

The second important thing to be done, therefore, still concerns legal and constitutional regulation. However incomparable the YÖK under Özcan's leadership may be with the old one, a constitutional arrangement must nevertheless be made on matters such as the relations of the universities with YÖK, their administration, and the election of rectors.

Prof. Özcan, who in his early days in office did not hesitate to say that his ultimate goal was to abolish YÖK, now brings us the news that work of this radical kind has begun. On the horizon of the new Turkey opened by the referendum results, we are frankly not surprised by such news, and that is also good.