Letter from Yıldız Technical University students: Courage is contagious

Dear BirGün readers,

We send our greetings on behalf of the students of Yıldız Technical University. Like our peers at other universities, we have been standing strong for days. We are growing the resistance against unlawfulness at our university and expanding the boycott call that began with ODTÜ’s initiative.

We have filled the squares not only on our campuses but throughout the city, “for a new life, for freedom, for equality.” One day, the streets of Beşiktaş echoed with students' voices. Another day, thousands of us marched to Beyazıt. We marched side by side in Şişli. We were there in the largest student protests in the history of the Republic! Our peers were taken into custody, and three were arrested. But fear has no place among us anymore. Our friends are being held unlawfully. We are still here, still fighting. Yıldız Technical has long been a university eyed by the government. Our Yıldız campus in Beşiktaş has been handed over to the AKP for years. And we’ve been saying it tirelessly: Yıldız will not become a presidential complex! And this country will not become your slave!

We know there will be no peace for us until this government, which has seized our campuses, our living spaces, our lives, and our future, is gone. Since we took to the streets, some have been unable to hide their astonishment. “We didn’t expect this from Gen Z,” they said. We are a generation whose entire life has been under AKP rule. We grew up under repression—while the children of government loyalists studied at private schools, we were left with nothing but pasta and dürüm wraps. We are the ones who entered university with big dreams and saw them shattered in big cities. We are the ones who couldn’t find housing, couldn’t get scholarships. The ones who had to work while studying. This anger and despair have been building up inside us for years. And now it is overflowing.

The barricade our friends tore down on 20 March in Beyazıt gave us courage too. Because we know: courage is contagious. The government, which has turned campuses into its own backyard, has seen that we are the real owners of those campuses. They tried to block the marches we held on campus. Appointed Rector Eyüp Debik issued threats. But did we stop? We did not!

We have come together not only through actions and marches, but also in forums. We see it: history is at a new threshold. Now, what we need is to understand and interpret this threshold together. Just like all other dictators throughout history, this one will meet his end too. Now we set out to write the history of the youth, of the resistance. No one should lose hope because our friends have been arrested—because we haven't. We know we are millions. We are right. There’s no prison big enough to hold us all. So we will fight, inside and outside, for our friends—and we will bring them back.

Now the government, thinking it can stop the youth by extending the holiday to nine days, should not rejoice. If our friends are not with us, there is no celebration for us. If there is no freedom, no justice—there is no holiday for us either.

Yıldız Technical University Students

Note: This text has been translated from the original Turkish version titled YTÜ öğrencilerinden mektup: Cesaret bulaşıcıdır, published in BirGün newspaper on March 31, 2025