ENGLISH

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Korkut Boratav has seen government purges gut three generations of Turkey's universities over the last 70 years. 

The retired economics professor's father, Pertev Naili Boratav, a renowned historian, was forced out of Istanbul university in 1948 for his views. He himself was dismissed from Ankara university in 1983 after the military coup. And last week, the 82-year-old's former assistant, Nilgun Erdem, was sacked.

Turkey’s academic community has been a major target of the massive purges in the wake of the botched coup attempt last year, with more than 4,000 academics expelled from universities across the country so far.

When I heard the news on late Tuesday night, I did not know who to pity more than the other. I knew a few of the victims, but the first one I thought was a soft-spoken, elderly gentleman; Prof İbrahim Kaboğlu, from Marmara University, a top Turkish expert on constitution and law.

His civil courage has remained a contrast with his mild manners: he is one of the flag bearers of those who against all odds defend the value of the rule of law. Tuesday night, this senior scholar from Istanbul was ‘awarded’ by being fired, in a most arbitrary way.

The Education and Science Worker’s Union (Egitim-Sen) organised a meeting at Ankara University under the name of “no, we are not leaving” protesting dismissals of academics by the decree laws published on Friday. However, the police and the security officers did not let the academics enter the university. On the insistence of the academics and students to go in, the police intervened and arrested several protesters.