When Bill Cobern, director of the Mallinson Institute for Science Education at Western Michigan University, visited Sakarya University, in Turkey, he was warmly welcomed, he says. But his views on religion and science received a chillier reception.
After a lecture he gave in 2011 on the competing influences of secularism and religion in science education, a high-ranking administrator at Sakarya stood up and made a case that science needed to be understood in the context of Islam.
He “warned that scientific ideas were OK, but reminded the students that such ideas were not taught by their religion,” recalls Mr. Cobern, who was in Turkey on a Fulbright fellowship.
“I can’t imagine a similar talk being given at a Turkish university in 2008,” Mr. Cobern says, referring to his first research trip to Turkey. “It was a specifically religious talk given at a secular university on the occasion of a secular lecture.”
His experience highlights what many scholars see as a growing Islamic influence at universities as a result of the policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, better known by its Turkish initials, AKP.
They say Mr. Erdogan and AKP officials have restricted academic freedom and undermined the teaching of topics, like evolution, that go against the party’s religious values. In a few cases, faculty members and intellectuals have been jailed for “dissident” views.
The long-running friction led many academics to join the antigovernment protests that roiled Turkey this summer. The demonstrations started as a protest to stop the razing of Gezi Park, a public park here, but quickly grew to encompass other causes. And while they have ebbed since June, in recent weeks unrest has flared again.
“The Gezi Park protests were a tipping point for many branches of society, and it was a much-needed release for academics that have been muted by their institutions that align themselves with the government’s rhetoric in order to guarantee financial support,” says a professor at the state-run Bosphorus University, who requested anonymity to avoid being reprimanded by administrators.
Mr. Erdogan is well known for his efforts to allow Muslim female students to wear headscarves at public universities, essentially ending an official ban on such signs of piety on campuses. But his religious values have touched other areas of higher education as well.
Government officials have long been responsible for selecting the leaders of public universities from among candidates proposed by faculty. But many professors say rectors now are chosen on the basis of their religious backgrounds—a preference that filters down to lower positions.
“Some universities do not even hold interviews anymore when recruiting staff,” says Gul Ara, who is earning her Ph.D. at Marmara University, about her efforts to get a job at a public university. “A position can be appointed merely by looking at the candidate’s résumé and measuring his performance in an in-house exam, which in some cases focuses solely on religion and Islamic history.”
“People say religion is a part of the government’s hidden agenda, but it’s no secret,” she says. “Erdogan has said he wants to raise a religious youth, and the most effective way of doing that is by infiltrating academic institutions.”
A Bias Toward Science
Research and science, too, have been targets. In 2003, after the AKP came to power, the Parliament passed a law that allowed the prime minister to appoint board members to the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, which directs national science priorities. That led several members of the institution to resign in protest.
Since then the council has promoted what some say is a biased agenda toward science, with the most prominent example being its controversial stance on evolution.
Many academics say the council has started a campaign to undermine the teaching of Darwinism and evolutionary theory in Turkey. In recent years, the government has occasionally blocked educational Web sites that discuss the topics, and the council was criticized for no longer translating and selling books by prominent writers including Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould. and Richard Lewontin. The council has denied the claims and released a statement saying some books had been discontinued because of to issues involving publication rights.
More recently, the council refused to pay for a summer workshop on evolutionary biology scheduled to be held in September at the Nesin Mathematics Village, a private educational facility. Esra Maden, an educational consultant who was one of the organizers of the workshop, said the council’s rejection letter stated that evolution was “both nationally and universally a controversial subject.” The research council did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the workshop or other controversies.
13 Years, 11 Months
A prominent symbol for academics’ anger over government polices has been Kemal Guruz, a chemistry professor and former president of the Council of Higher Education, which oversees the country’s universities. He was arrested last year and held without bail on charges that he was part of a clandestine organization, called Ergenekon, that the government says was behind a failed coup plot. The government has charged more than 200 military officers, journalists, and academics like Mr. Guruz with being part of the secret movement.
His supporters, including the Scholars at Risk Network and other international academic groups, say Mr. Guruz is being punished for his outspoken advocacy against religious influences in education and science. He was, for example, an opponent of the move to allow female students to wear headscarves at public universities.
In mid-June, Mr. Guruz attempted suicide in prison, reportedly in response to his harsh treatment there. He survived and in August was sentenced to 13 years and 11 months in prison.
It is cases like Mr. Guruz’s that helped spur academics into the streets during the summer. After the demonstrations subsided, some say they faced retribution for their involvement.
Mr. Erdogan publicly criticized some universities for postponing final exams during the unrest, saying it encouraged students to join protests. He said the administrators who made those decisions would be investigated and announced that the Council of Higher Education would also investigate students and faculty members who participated in the protests. The council did not respond to requests for comment about the investigations.
At Bilgi University, a private institution in Istanbul, faculty members were warned by the administration about supporting the protests on Twitter and Facebook after a high-ranking AKP deputy complained to the university’s governing board about a list of academics who he thought had been “too sympathetic,” says Esra Arsan, an associate professor in social sciences who has clashed with the administration on academic-freedom issues. Administrators at Bilgi did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the crackdown by Turkish authorities, some students and academics continue to meet to discuss ways to fight for political and education reforms, usually gathering quietly in homes. While faculty members at the informal meetings are optimistic that they can keep pressure on the government, most of them acknowledge that real change in the higher-education system is unlikely to come about anytime soon.