The YÖK President and university sociology

The term of office of Prof. Dr. Yusuf Ziya Özcan, President of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK), expires as of today unless extended by his being reappointed by the President of the Republic. The change in the field of higher education since the day he took office has held an important place within the total change that Turkey is going through.

Indeed, the institution that has kept pace with the change Turkey has been going through for the last 9 years most belatedly has been the university institution.

Until 4 years ago, when Özcan took office, in contrast to the change experienced in Turkey in many areas from the economy to politics, from transportation to international relations, universities had closed in on themselves with a bigoted resistance and had not shown a parallel development. In this, undoubtedly, the fact that the university had been assigned a very key role in the old tutelary regime had an important effect. Universities had been established with a militant conception of science to preserve Turkey's old regime.

When necessary, the authoritarian discourse inherent in science was instrumentalized and tutelage was maintained; when necessary, they were also thought of as vigorous forces to be spilled into the streets with both students and faculty to prepare the ground for military tutelage. In the forties and fifties too, the actions of students and faculty played a very important role on the road to the 27 May coup. They played this role in 12 March, 12 September and 28 February as well, in exactly the ways written for them in the script. The YÖK system established after 12 September made it possible for this role to be played in a more controlled manner, but even in the periods when YÖK had not been established, this function of the universities had been thought of as a primary duty. Before YÖK the number of universities was relatively smaller, and since their number would later increase considerably, their control had required a more centralized structuring.

On the other hand, the line of development of higher education in Turkey has been very closely related to the level of democratization. The increase in the number of universities has inevitably strengthened the sociological ground of democratization. Despite this relationship, or perhaps precisely because of it, the will to bring universities under control never disappeared either. Moreover, precisely because of this relationship, the forces in Turkey resistant to democratization have continuously opposed the opening of new universities. For that reason every new university opened has in a way carried the road to democratization one step further. The simple reason is that higher education has been at the head of the channels for bringing peripheral elements to the center. The resistance displayed against the opening of new universities also merged with elitist concerns about peripheral elements being brought to the center.

The number of universities, which was only 19 until 1982, rose to 55 by 1993, the year of Özal's death, through his initiatives. That is, in a short period of 11 years he tripled the number of universities. Every new university opened was opposed with the criticism of "signboard university," but the universities opened with a signboard that day have today become not at all bad universities. All of them are very open to development with good management. From 1993, the year Özal died, until 2002, not a single state university was opened.

However, from 2003, with the AK Parti's coming to power, new universities began to be opened rapidly, despite the resistance of the YÖK mentality left over from 28 February, which can be better understood today. With the foundation universities, the number of universities, which was 76 at that date, has today risen to 165, 103 of them state universities (all data on this can be accessed from Prof. Durmuş Günay's article in the journal Yüksek Öğretim ve Bilim Dergisi).

In our country, where about 1 million 700 thousand students sit the exam every year to attend university, it was impossible to understand this resistance displayed against opening universities.

That when Prof. Özcan came to the YÖK presidency, in parallel with the government's policy of increasing the number of universities, he nearly doubled capacity in a short time merely by increasing the quotas of existing universities, without even adding a new one, is truly a subject to be dwelt on at length. If this capacity increase could be made with a simple procedure, from whom is one to demand an account of the lives of the students who had wanted to study for so long and were not offered this right?

The old YÖK administration had lost its mind over the headscarf and coefficient problems. Both issues were based on an "exclusionary," "fascistic" attitude that worked to close the doors on those who wanted to study. Great, big university rectors came together and racked their brains solely over how they could carry out this exclusion most effectively. The ways they finally found showed only how poor their hearts, how narrow their horizons, and how cruel their approaches were. What they did were things that no one who harbored a gram of compassion, mercy and love for their country and its people could do. Their hearts were openly full of hatred toward a significant part of the country.

We remember as if it were yesterday the attitude that the members of the Inter-University Board displayed toward Prof. Özcan when he became president, particularly over the coefficient and the headscarf. At the meeting of the Board he chaired, he was not given a seat, his speech was cut off with slogans in an attempt to silence him, and he was subjected to open disrespect.

In his 4-year term of office, Prof. Özcan not only brought the headscarf and coefficient issues to a certain level of solution but also sought to eliminate the elitist, exclusionary and fascistic attitude toward universities that lay in the background of these two problems, and he largely succeeded in this. If the name of YÖK, which today is identified with oppression, exclusion and a centralized despotism, still stands but all the qualities behind this name have changed radically, Prof. Özcan's distinctive democratic stance and personality have played an important role in this. At the end of his 4-year term this must be recorded with gratitude.