Police detained at least three people at İstanbul’s Boğaziçi University on Friday as the school administration restricted access to the campus and moved classes online ahead of a planned visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a dormitory opening ceremony, Turkish Minute reported.
Boğaziçi administrators said the campus would be closed for the day to most students, faculty members and staff, allowing entry only to personnel assigned to the event and students living in the women’s dormitory.
Students said they were searched multiple times near the campus and that detentions took place after some attempted to display banners near a gate.
Dorm residents received messages instructing them to leave their buildings in the morning for security screening. Faculty members said the restrictions prevented them from holding their weekday “academic vigil,” a daily protest they have carried out since January 2021.
Boğaziçi, one of Turkey’s best-known public universities, has been at the center of a prolonged conflict over university autonomy since January 2021, when Erdoğan appointed an outsider rector, sparking months of student protests and a continuing faculty campaign against what critics call political control of the institution.
Replacing the first appointee, Erdoğan tapped Naci İnci to lead the university, and faculty members have continued weekday demonstrations demanding a return to a governance model that they say reflects academic independence.
