In University Purge, Turkey’s Erdogan Hits Secularists and Boosts Conservatives By Joe Parkinson and Emre Peker

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-failed-coup-turkeys-erdogan-is-purging-universities-of-potential-enemies-1472053608

Crackdown, which has snagged associates of imam Fethullah Gulen and others, is designed to remake country’s higher education in president’s image.

KONYA, Turkey—On the humid afternoon after July’s bloody coup attempt, signs of a rift that is redefining this nation’s academia played out in two cities 400 miles apart.

In Istanbul, Nil Mutluer grabbed her 3-year-old daughter and raced with a suitcase toward Turkey’s coast. The former sociology-department chair at the city’s Nisantasi University narrowly escaped the nation’s looming dragnet.

“Authorities had already begun questioning colleagues at the airports,” said Dr. Mutluer, 42, a Western-leaning liberal who took a ferry to Greece en route to an academic post in Berlin.

That afternoon in Konya, once known as the Citadel of Islam, some local professors cheered the coup’s failure as a chance to remake Turkish academia. “Elitist professors are looking at the world with Western glasses—they’re not really thinking about what the Turkish people want and need,” said Assistant Professor Sedat Gumus, 33, a U.S.-educated lecturer at Konya’s Necmettin Erbakan University, named after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political mentor.

For Sedat Gumus, an associate professor at Necmettin Erbakan University in Konya, the failed coup provides an opportunity to intensify the revamping of Turkish academia.
For Sedat Gumus, an associate professor at Necmettin Erbakan University in Konya, the failed coup provides an opportunity to intensify the revamping of Turkish academia. Photo: Ivor Prickett for The Wall Street Journal

“The current situation might be a golden opportunity for Turkey to write a new constitution,” he said, “and with it reform the higher-education system.”

Turkey’s crackdown after the July 15 putsch has been swift and expansive, sweeping through the military, judiciary and higher education. The government declared a state of emergency and said it has detained more than 40,000 people as it hunts for suspected affiliates of the man officials accuse as the mastermind, Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Turkish imam. Mr. Gulen, who counts millions of supporters in part because of his network’s investments in education, has denied any role. CONTINUE AT SITE

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