POLITICS AND HIGHER EDUCATION

How a Promising Turkish College Becomes Victim of Political Vendetta: The Tragedy of Sehir University

President Erdogan graced the opening of Istanbul Sehir University in 2010; ten years later, he ordered its shutdown. A college fell victim to palace intrigue and political revenge.

Abdullah Ayasun
14 min readJul 10, 2020

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President Abdullah Gul, C, then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (4th-L), then-Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (3rd L), Sehir University Rector Gokhan Cetinsaya (2nd L) during the inauguration ceremony of Sehir University on October 5, 2010.

Prologue

On October 5, 2010, President Abdullah Gul, then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and countless other bigwigs of the Turkish government all graced the inauguration ceremony of a newfound university in Istanbul’s Asian side. This high-profile attendance was a testament to the privileged status of a university — Istanbul Sehir University — as well as their expectations from it: raising a new generation of intellectuals with a conservative worldview.

I was there on that day. I was a new master student as the school simultaneously accepted its first undergraduate and graduate students that semester. We were bundled together with other MA candidates at a small place while media members and a wide array of academic figures crammed into a tiny space reserved for them due to security and protocol reasons…

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Abdullah Ayasun
Abdullah Ayasun

Written by Abdullah Ayasun

Boston-based journalist and writer. Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. On art, culture, politics and everything in between. X: @abyasun

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