SAR’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project investigates and reports attacks on higher education with the aim of raising awareness, generating advocacy, and increasing protection for scholars, students, and academic communities. Learn more.
Results
On February 28, 2022, police forcibly arrested and briefly detained 26 students participating in a protest over the rising cost of living, gas, and electricity in Istanbul. The protests had been going on since September 2021, when students from various universities ...
On February 22, 2022, a group of 30 people reportedly entered the Akdeniz University campus and beat three students in an apparently targeted attack on the basis of their ethnicity. The students, Botan Artuç, Fevzi Akan, and Hatice Tonğ, who are ...
In a meeting on January 18, 2022, Turkey’s Council of Higher Education (YÖK) ordered the dismissal of three deans from Boğaziçi University, apparently for their participation in protests against the university’s rector. On January 19, news outlets began reporting that Boğaziçi ...
On January 9, 2022, a group of 30 people armed with knives and machetes prevented three students from entering the Faculty of Law building at Ankara University and attacked them, apparently on the basis of the students’ ethnicity. The assailants, who ...
On December 14, 2021, police attacked and detained peacefully protesting students at Ankara University. Students held a sit-in focusing on Turkey’s economic crisis at the university’s Faculty of Political Sciences after a previous demonstration was violently interrupted by an off-campus group ...
On December 8, 2021, a group of individuals armed with knives entered Ankara University and attempted to attack students who organized a forum on Turkey’s economic crisis. Students had planned to hold the forum at the Faculty of Political Sciences to ...
On November 8, 2021, Turkish police beat and arrested 11 students protesting Turkey’s Council on Higher Education (YÖK) on Ankara University’s Cebeci Campus. YÖK was established by Turkey’s then military government in 1981 to oversee and manage higher education. Since then, ...
On November 5, 2021, Hifzullah Kutum, a Kurdish research assistant at Firat University, was briefly detained by Turkish authorities and suspended from his position by the university’s administration in response to his social media activity. On September 14, Kutum posted the ...
On October 22, 2021, police arrested 45 students participating in a protest at Boğaziçi University (BU) against the appointment of a new rector to the university. Beginning in January 2021, students and faculty across Turkey held protests in response to a ...
On October 7, 2021, police detained 14 Boğaziçi University students who had gathered to protest the detention of two students arrested the previous day. Beginning in January 2021, students and faculty across Turkey held protests in response to the controversial appointment ...