The revocation of Istanbul Bilgi University’s operating license by a Presidential decree published in the Official Gazette on May 22, 2026, constitutes one of the darkest thresholds in the despotic campaign waged by political power in Turkey against universities, scientific autonomy, and academic freedom. This decision did not merely terminate the legal existence of an educational institution; it ruthlessly destroyed a quarter-century of intellectual accumulation, the labor of over a thousand academics and tens of thousands of students, international scientific networks, and Turkey’s already fragile foundation of scientific autonomy. This measure, enacted by the political power while hiding behind the shield of “legal process,” is the most concrete declaration of a systematic hostility towards the institution of the university and an intolerance of science and free thought.
The Historical-Theoretical Foundations of University Autonomy and Academic Freedom
Since its inception, the university has been shaped around two indispensable principles: scientific autonomy and academic freedom. As early as 1978, Anıl Çeçen emphasized that university autonomy means “the university being governed by its own organs, and the limitation of state intervention,” and that it is a prerequisite for scientific production (Çeçen, 1978). The landmark 1992 decision of the Constitutional Court ruled that universities are “public legal entities possessing autonomy” and that the state’s supervisory power cannot turn into an intervention that eliminates this autonomy (Constitutional Court, E. 1991/21, K. 1992/42). Yet in Turkey, this principle has been systematically dismantled step by step by the ruling power over the last two decades.
Tokay Gedikoğlu’s comprehensive examination reveals the structural obstacles to academic freedom in Turkey and the stifling effect of the centralist character of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) on scientific production (Gedikoğlu, 2009). Bülent Bingöl, meanwhile, has determined that post-1980 legal regulations, particularly the Higher Education Law No. 2547, gradually transformed universities into extensions of the state bureaucracy, making them vulnerable to political intervention (Bingöl, 2012). This structural weakness prepared the legal ground that allows a President to close a university with a single signature today. Saniye Gül Dedeoğlu, after recalling the universal standards of academic freedom, systematically analyzed the mechanisms through which scientists are suppressed in Turkey, emphasizing that without freedom, universities are reduced to vocational schools, losing their function of research and critical thought (Dedeoğlu, 2014).
The Roots of Systematic Despotism Against Universities in Turkey
The closure of Bilgi University is not an isolated incident but the final act of a systematic despotism with much deeper roots. The mass academic dismissals during the State of Emergency (OHAL) declared after 2016 constituted the first major wave of this despotism. İlknur Özlem Taştan’s study documents, in all its nakedness, how universities were turned into an apparatus of purge during the OHAL period and how academic freedoms were trampled (Taştan, 2021). During this period, thousands of academics were dismissed on grounds with no legal basis, plunging universities into a climate of fear.
The judicial and administrative pressures faced by academics who signed the “Peace Petition” have demonstrated the ruling power’s intolerance of critical thought in the clearest way. The comprehensive legal analysis by Rıdvan Ergün and Berke Özenç reveals how concepts like freedom of expression, academic freedom, and “loyalty to the state” were distorted in this process, and how even the Constitutional Court proved inadequate in protecting academic freedoms (Ergün and Özenç, 2019). While another Constitutional Court decision in 2023 confirmed the constitutional guarantees of academic freedom in principle, it proved a serious lack of will in implementing these guarantees in practice (Constitutional Court, E. 2018/117, K. 2023/212). The ruling power used this vacuum to further deepen its despotic control over universities.
Hostility to Science Waged Through Trustees: The Process of Closing Bilgi University
The paving stones on the path to the closure of Istanbul Bilgi University began to be laid in September 2025 with the appointment of a trustee to the university under the pretext of an investigation into Can Holding. However, one of the most fundamental requirements of the rule of law, the principle of “individuality of responsibility,” clearly dictates that allegations against holding executives cannot be used to punish an entire university. As Burcu Kükner emphasizes in her discussion of “academic freedom as a right,” academic freedom is both an individual right and an institutional guarantee; an intervention against a university violates the rights not only of the individuals in that institution but of the entire scientific community (Kükner, 2019). Indeed, the unjustified dismissal of research assistants, arbitrary administrative appointments, and interventions in academic programs during the trustee process have been recorded as concrete examples of this mass rights violation. The closure decision on May 22, 2026, is the extreme endpoint of this chain of violations.
This process is the product of a “management strategy” that summarizes the ruling power’s view of science and autonomy. As Ahmet Sinan Bilgili shows in his conceptual analysis, scientific autonomy and academic freedom are two complementary principles; any attack on one directly wounds the other (Bilgili, 2022). What has been experienced in Turkey over the last twenty years consists precisely of this dual erosion process. Fatma Buğday has analyzed the historical and structural roots of this erosion in two separate studies. In her first study, Buğday (2023) addresses the course of the weakening of university autonomy in Turkey; in the second, she places the crisis of the university idea in a theoretical framework by associating it with neoliberal transformation, arguing that as universities are managed like market actors, their spheres of autonomy shrink, and academic freedom remains merely nominal (Buğday, 2026). Esra Eren supports this analysis by examining how the Bologna Process was turned into a tool of bureaucratic control in Turkey and how universities were homogenized (Eren, 2023).
Brain Drain: The Scientific Cost of Despotism
The heaviest bill for the ruling power’s hostility to science and autonomy has been the loss of the country’s trained human capital. In her study titled “Brain Drain or Brain Power?”, Füsun Tanrısevdi has demonstrated that the academic mobility from Turkey to abroad has reached dramatic dimensions, with the leading push factors being the restriction of academic freedom, non-meritocratic appointments, and political pressures (Tanrısevdi, 2019). Filiz Tufan Emini and Hatice Gürsoy, examining five-year development plans, also determined that Turkey is inadequate in addressing brain drain as a structural problem and that the outflow has gained a permanent character (Tufan Emini and Gürsoy, 2021).
The comprehensive diaspora report prepared by Ufuk Akçiğit for the Turkish Academy of Sciences, revealing the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of brain drain with striking data, has called for an urgent policy change (Akçiğit, 2024). Yet a despotic mindset that sees closing a university with a Presidential signature as a “solution” is, on the contrary, the primary actor exacerbating brain drain. The closure of Bilgi University will deepen this structural problem further, making Turkey an unlivable country for scientists.
The Collapse of International Academic Reputation and the Proliferation of a Culture of Fear
The international repercussions of the closure decision have also been devastating for Turkey’s scientific reputation. The 2025 report jointly published by the European University Association (EUA) and Scholars at Risk counts Turkey among the countries where academic freedom violations are most intense (EUA, 2025). Two independent reports published by Scholars at Risk in the same year depict the oppressive environment in Turkey using “dark” terms (Scholars at Risk, October 2025; Scholars at Risk, November 2025).
Current assessments within the country also confirm this picture. The academic freedom reports published by the Science Academy in 2023 and 2025 reveal with data that political pressure on universities is intensifying, that scientists are forced to self-censor, and that institutional autonomy has effectively disappeared (Science Academy, 2023; Science Academy, 2025). The 2026 mid-term report of the Education and Science Workers’ Union (Eğitim Sen) emphasizes that more than 251 cases of rights violations reflected in the press were identified in 2025 alone, and that universities have turned from “havens of science” into “empires of fear” (Eğitim Sen, 2026). The report of the University and Academics Association (ÜNİVDER) for the same period documents the prevalence of arbitrary dismissals, mobbing, investigation threats, and precarious working conditions (ÜNİVDER, 2026).
This climate of fear also deeply affects students. Olga Selin Hünler’s recent research shows how the absence of academic freedom and self-censorship destroys students’ critical thinking skills, democratic participation habits, and intellectual identities (Hünler, 2025). As underlined in the interview with Yeşim M. Atamer, students are being raised with learned helplessness and a culture of fear, which poses a serious threat to the future of democracy (Atamer, 2024). The principles document prepared based on the Boğaziçi University experience, in fact, demonstrates how universal norms of autonomy and freedom, applicable to all Turkish universities, are being disregarded (Adaman, 2021).
Conclusion
What was closed on May 22, 2026, was not only the signboard of Istanbul Bilgi University but Turkey’s scientific accumulation, intellectual diversity, and democratic future. This administrative measure, disguised in a legal cloak, is in reality a political blow dealt to the institution of the university, to free thought, and to the common scientific heritage of humanity. This despotic campaign waged by the ruling power against universities tramples the constitution, laws, and international conventions, dragging Turkey into a darkness devoid of science, autonomy, and critical reason. Halting this course necessitates a fundamental change in mentality, legal reforms that will restore university autonomy, and the reconstruction of a democratic atmosphere where scientists can work freely. Otherwise, the political mindset that closed Bilgi today will continue to darken Turkey’s scientific and democratic future entirely tomorrow.
References
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Sefa Yürükel
Danish ethnographer and social anthropologist (MA)
Aarhus University, 1997
Independent Researcher
Fields of Research: International Politics, Public International Law, Geopolitics, Sociology, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Systems and Structures.
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