Universities: The Gateways to Freedom or Submissiveness

Above photo is taken at a public university in Turkey. It may not seem remarkable at first glance. Just another plain cement building, reminiscent of the uninspiring public sector.

However, what makes it interesting is the two words written above those doors: “Student Entrance” (Öğrenci Girişi)

Few feet away, just around the corner is another door. “Faculty Member Entrance” (Öğretim Üyesi Girişi) it says.

I am sorry, but having separate entrances for the academic staff and the students -at a public university, of all places- reminds me of the Jim Crow laws in the US. This is segregation to me, no matter how you swing it.

What could be the rationale for having separate doors for faculty members and the students? Are the university students a wild pack that we need to avoid when getting in and out of the buildings? Would the mighty professors get stepped on if they walked with the common folk? It just doesn’t make sense…

The problem of hierarchy and super rigid pecking orders under the roof of what is supposed to be a universal institution of higher education bothers me a lot.

When I was teaching at a public university in Ankara, my university had five (yep, FIVE) separate lunch halls depending on your status in the pecking order.

At the bottom were the students. They had their separate place and God forbid, if they dared to show up at the other lunch halls. Their cards wouldn’t work and they would get scoffed at.

Then came the super rigid ladder for the staff. The lowest step was the manual laborers. They had their separate quarters tucked way in the back. Only once I peeked my head in, for I had lost my way. Instantly everyone stared at me and I understood my grave (!) mistake. I bowed down and backed out to my assigned quarters…

Next, came the second tier of staff. These were low ranking, white-collar workers, such as secretaries. They wouldn’t mix with the manual laborers, but wouldn’t mix with the higher ranked staff either.

With my meager status as a TA, I was a member of the third tier. This was a middle-of-the-road crowd, with bunch of low ranking academics, like TAs and instructors, and high-ranking admin staff, such as faculty secretaries. Assistant Professors who wanted to show some solidarity also came and ate with us.

Lastly, the top tier: Assistant Professors and up. The mighty professors didn’t line up with trays like us the commoners. They were perched up at a restaurant with the best views of campus, had tables with white linen and waiting staff…  

In a recent column, Gunduz Vassaf states that human beings feel extremely submissive to authority, when they don’t feel confident and powerful as individuals. He gives the examples of universities in Turkey, as institutions that cultivate this culture of hierarchy and submission.

Unfortunately, since the last military coup in 1980 the academic circles in Turkey failed terribly in terms of adhering to the universal principles of higher education. Instead teaching universal values like equality and freedom, majority of the universities are grinding the young generations into docility and submission. Their institutional culture is inimical to cultivating self-respecting individuals with critical thinking skills. Segregated entrances and lunch halls are all part of this structure that instills submission to authority.

The word university is derived from the Latin word, universe. It is composed by putting together uni (one) and versus (turned), with the combined meaning referring to one becoming whole, as in the whole cosmos.

If we cannot even bring students and faculty together and have them walk through the same gates and have lunch at the same tables, what kind of a whole are we talking about? What kind of a university are we talking about?

When I transferred to a different university in Ankara, one of the first things I appreciated was the de-segregated food court! Faculty members and students all lined up with their trays, chose their meals and sat wherever they could find. All as equal human beings! What a relief, I thought...

Wishing you all free and egalitarian university experiences,

The hierarch-averse Academic Mommy

The GOOD, The BAD, and the UGLY:

Another Historic September 12th in Turkey

Ladies and Gentlemen!

September 12th will no longer be remembered solely as the notorious anniversary of the 1980 coup in Turkey. 30 years after the coup, we just had a referendum on the very same day! The subject of the referendum: whether or not to amend some articles of the 1982 Constitution.

The ballot itself was simple enough, with only two choices: Yes or No to the amendments.

And below are the results...

The yellow and red map here is used by the most popular Turkish daily, Hurriyet.

As seen from their dichotomous choice in colors, Hurriyet has a tendency to avoid nuances. It projects almost every political issue in Turkey as black and white! No matter how convoluted, layered and complicated the subject is...

From reading Hurriyet's analysis of the referendum results, an average reader would get the idea that Turkey is a terribly split country!

Just detach the coastal provinces neatly along the perforated lines...

I remember a similar color coding for the 2004 US election results, when G. W. Bush won the second time. The most popular US map that circulated around was showing the solid blue (Democrat) coastal states surrounding a massive red (Republican) continent in the center. In fact, some e-mail jokes circulated around for a while, showing the blue states uniting with Canada in a larger "United States of Canada" and the red states alone establishing the "United States of Jesus!"

The Turkish map above in many ways harks back to that kind of a US style stereotyping in the form of "culture wars". The country at hand is split between the enlightened, progressive and more affluent coastal voters, and the lesser- educated, conservative and more rural voters of the heartland.

Based on the referendum results, Hurriyet and most of its columnists paint a black and white picture of Turkey: From their perspective, the enlightened coastal region voters bravely casted "No!" votes, and thus, tried to prevent the looming threat of Islamic authoritarianism, whereas the dull-witted conservatives in the Anatolian heartland and the poor, gullible Kurds of the East spoiled the whole thing by saying "Yes!"

No need to read the rest, if you buy this interpretation.

Now, if you are still with me, let's try to paint the same results with slightly more subtlety. Below map might be somewhat more informative, for it provides us the "shades" of Yes and No votes.

As seen above, when we include the actual percentages of Yes and No votes, the clear distinction between the coasts and the heartland blur significantly.

Still, in both these maps above, there is a very important group of voters that are not taken into account: Those who never went to the ballot box in order to boycott the referendum.

Even though the ballot itself had only two options, we had three separate political campaigns across the country: The Yes Campaign by the ruling AKP, The No Campaign by the opposition parties CHP and MHP, and the Boycott Campaign by the Kurdish party, BDP.

So, here is another map for you below. This one shows the preference of the majority votes in each province. Blues=Yes, Reds=No, and Yellows= Boycott.

I know, this last map makes things even more complicated... The cities in the southeast which seem to be the most pro-Yes, hence pro-AKP above, suddenly turn out to be the most pro-boycott, hence more pro-Kurdish provinces below!

With these three maps, I just wanted to lay out the most recent puzzle in Turkish politics.

If there could be so much variation in just displaying the results, imagine how much variation could exist in interpreting them.

Good luck in your efforts to make sense of the referendum results. Let me know if develop something more sophisticated than this "a nation split in two/three ways" argument...

Hope you're enjoying the cool days of fall without a sore throat or runny nose,

The referendum averse Academic Mommy