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Today, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked the gay community, saying it contradicts Turkish values, and compared the student protesters to “terrorists”, following student protests that began a month ago that challenged his authority.
More than 300 students and their supporters were arrested in Istanbul and the capital Ankara in clashes with police, which saw further violence and political resurgence this week.
Demonstrations broke out for the first time in protest against the appointment of Erdogan, a loyalist to his party, Melih Polo, rector of the prestigious Bosphorus University (Bogazici) in Istanbul, earlier this year.
His appointment caused quite a stir because the students saw this as part of Erdogan’s efforts to impose central control over the life of the Turks in all its aspects.
Today, Erdogan launched an attack, one of the strongest to date, in a move that threatens to escalate to pose a serious challenge to his 18-year tenure.
“Are they students or terrorists who dare to break into the dean’s room?” He said in a videoconference to supporters of his party. “This country will not be a place where terrorists spread. We will never allow this,” he added.
The youth demonstrations are reminiscent of the 2013 protests that broke out in opposition to the project to destroy a park in Istanbul, before spreading across the country to pose a direct threat to the Erdogan government.
The crisis over the university dean took on a new dimension when protesters hung a photo of the Kaaba near his office, on which he placed the rainbow flag, a symbol associated with the gay community, last week.
On Monday, Erdogan attacked the “LGBTQ community”, claiming that young people from his party were not among them. And renew those attacks today. He said: “The gay community, there is no such thing,” adding: “This country … has morals and will march into the future with these values.”
No intention of quitting
Erdogan’s remarks come a day after police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds of more than a thousand in Istanbul and several hundred in the capital Ankara.
Police reported more than 170 arrests.
And the dean of the university who was the target of the demonstrations categorically ruled out giving in to the protesters’ demands and resigning. “I do not think at all about resigning,” Polo told the Khabarrak newspaper, adding: “Initially I expected this crisis to end in six months, and that will happen.”
Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu said 79 of the detainees were “members of terrorist groups,” such as the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front. He said, “They took over the dean’s office. I can’t allow that, and I’m the Home Secretary.”
The gay community did not primarily lead the demonstrations against the university rector, or about Erdogan’s policies as a whole. But the scandal sparked by the photo threw them in the middle of Turkish politics and made them face more and more political attacks.
Soylu wrote in a tweet on Saturday that “four homosexual deviants” had been arrested for “inciting hatred” in connection with the legend. Twitter hid that tweet and another tweet of his on Tuesday, under a warning that they were violating “the hate rules of the platform.”
Although Turkish law in modern Turkish history allows homosexuality, the annual gay march in Istanbul has been banned since 2016. The Bogazici University gay club was disbanded after the incident, but the dean stressed that it “respects all identities.”
“I am a person who defends the rights and freedoms of homosexuals,” Polo told the newspaper.
