Machete gangs on duty: Universities are the target of the government

Political Collective

The struggle for the right to eat at Hacettepe University emerged as one of the common demands of all students. As one of the most important subjects of the 19 March resistance, the youth's struggle against the one-man regime developed step by step around their own economic and democratic urgent demands, within forms of unity and solidarity extending to the ÖTK (Student Councils). The struggle of Hacettepe students came to life precisely as a new stage of the post-19 March resistance. The fact that this struggle could be a legitimate and mass-based common struggle of all students; that the movement and action could be a new form of the 19 March unity, perhaps emerged as one of its most important characteristics for the new era.

Today, the government is carrying out a two-headed attack. One is to arrange provocations through fascist nationalists, and the other is to make interventions that will fuel fragmentation among the youth dynamics of 19 March.

FASCIST PROVOCATION IN ACTION

The orchestration of the nationalist fascist provocation against Hacettepe University coincided precisely with the potential for the student struggle to transform into a general call for university struggle, gaining the active support of broad sections of students on a legitimate basis. As always, the fascist provocation once again reveals itself as an operation aimed at eliminating this struggle as a general student struggle and severing its broad mass ties. Attacks on universities in every period take place in a similar manner, with the collaboration of the police and the administration, accompanied by ultranationalist fascist provocation. The continuing police siege of the fascists' attack at Hacettepe is an evidence of this.

THE PLAN IS TO DIVIDE THE YOUTH

On 19 March, young people with very different political orientations and ideologies were able to come together on common ground to fight against the current government.

Pushing these young people, who emerged as one of the most important forces of the 19 March resistance, into opposing positions was a plan that the government sought to implement from the outset. They were unable to achieve this within the resistance.

However, at this stage, as a result of the fragmentation experienced within the general opposition front, particularly due to the tensions created by the opening process, differences within the youth are also being provoked as a dynamic of conflict. The differences among the opposition youth are being pushed towards opposing positions, particularly around Kurdish-Turkish antagonism. A segment – commissioned by certain parties – is being mobilised to deliberately provoke this antagonism. This is developing as another tactic employed by the government to break the student struggle and fragment its potential.

UNITY, SOLIDARITY AND STRUGGLE

Faced with these blatant provocations by those in power, the student movement is finding ways to develop its struggle around its own specific demands. The fact that a mass and legitimate student struggle has been established around the right to eat at universities, from Hacettepe to Dil Tarih, makes it strong in the face of fascist provocations and attacks orchestrated from outside.

As in every field, the main focus of the struggle in universities should be to find ways to struggle together, Kurds and Turks, Alevis and Sunnis, against the AKP and MHP government and all their apparatus in universities, in line with a spirit of unity, apart from the conflict that ethnic and sectarian divisions seek to create... The struggle of all young people whose future has been seized will be won by students who unite around the struggle to defend the country's future...

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RESISTANCE BECOMES MORE THAN JUST A CONCEPT

Students are changing both themselves and youth politics in the areas where they come together around everyday, legitimate and concrete demands. Particularly before 19 March, the concept of ‘resistance,’ which was abstract for students, is becoming concrete in canteen queues, broken lifts, and rent negotiations, and is growing in canteen occupations, ÖTK discussions, and youth forums.

Campuses in Turkey are now the scene of resistance, where students come together, debate, find solutions and take action around their legitimate and concrete demands. The deepening housing problem over the years, inadequate state scholarships, canteen price increases, reactionary siege and, especially after the 19 March resistance, increasing pressure and bans have foreshadowed a new path that students will open with their own compass and a new era in which they will raise their voices.

The anger that had been building up on campuses for a long time was fuelled by the concrete and fierce problems of youth. As students turned their individual and seemingly simple demands in their own areas into an organised struggle for rights, the way was paved for social and political youth will. Students built a new culture of solidarity around issues that were part of their daily lives.

The economic policies pursued by the government for years have led to an economic collapse where even the basic needs of young people are considered a luxury. Young people, driven into a life where they cannot afford to have a coffee with friends due to economic conditions, spend hours in municipal free food queues, and walk to school to spare the fare for the bus, have been deprived of the motivation for the future, solidarity, and hope necessary to sustain all this. It was inevitable that young people, who cannot even cover half of their food expenses with a monthly state scholarship of 3,000 lira, would not remain silent to the protest against the food price increase at their schools or to a statement distributed calling for an improvement in their living conditions. Therefore, the students' daily, concrete demands are being met at the Hacettepe cafeteria, the Dil Tarih yard, and the Beyazıt gate.

“WE WON’T BE THE NEXT ONES”

The housing problem keeps some young people from going to university, forces some students into religious boarding houses, and makes some students spend most of their time working instead of studying. The budget that should be allocated to state institutions to solve students' housing problems is instead being transferred to foundations and religious sects. Young people are forced to live in overcrowded rooms, unsafe boarding houses, and under conditions of ‘supervised freedom.’ Young people do not want to become the next Enes Kara, Zeren Ertaş, or Kasım Bulgan due to the unsolvable housing crisis, unregulated dormitories, and insecure conditions. They are coming together for their most basic right, housing, saying, ‘We will not sacrifice another friend in this system.’ Insecure living conditions do not only affect students in their dormitories. Campuses are also being turned into places where women are murdered with guns and students are attacked with machetes, due to the negligence, lack of oversight, and impunity of the trustees appointed as rectors. The bond students have formed with their campus, refusing to abandon it to this reactionary darkness, is growing stronger in proportion to the resistance shown against these attacks. Students want to have a say and make decisions in the campuses, classrooms, and canteens where they spend most of their day. While the reactionary siege continues in every area the government can touch, university campuses, one of the few areas where students can feel free, are also being imprisoned in this reactionary transformation. Students defending their campuses against this transformation, which is being accelerated by social restrictions on campus, timetable changes and the introduction of religious-reactionary education by trustees, are also gaining an awareness of the ‘public sphere’. The slogan ‘universities are ours, the future is ours’ of young people who do not want to surrender their public spaces to the government gains even more meaning with their determination to participate in university administration, change the existing spaces and claim their lives.

RESISTANCE TAKES SHAPE

Students are changing both themselves and youth politics in the spaces where they come together around everyday, legitimate and concrete demands. In particular, ‘resistance,’ which was an abstract concept for students before 19 March, is becoming concrete in the canteen queues, broken lifts and rent negotiations, and is growing in canteen occupations, ÖTK discussions and youth forums.

The student movement, rediscovering its own power, is now preparing for a potential shift from the local to the global, from demands to resistance. And it is clear that neither investigations, nor detentions, nor gangs with machetes can decelerate this potential.

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NOTES FROM THE STRUGGLE – HACETTEPE STUDENTS: THE VOICE OF YOUTH IS BEING SILENCED WITH MACHETE

Students want a free and democratic university; this is no longer a demand that can be concealed with lies or silenced with pressure. University student 's real demands are clear in the face of a gang terrorising the university, which has no place there.

We observe that the government is attempting to hinder the struggle that Hacettepe University students have been carrying on for weeks despite all the pressure, particularly the attacks that took place at Hacettepe University and DTCF in Ankara, by using gangs with machetes or outsiders brought in, seeing that the growing student movement in these faculties and universities can no longer be stopped by pressure.

We see an environment where university students' many legitimate demands, from housing to the right to eat, are being undermined, targeted, and where people are being blacklisted and physically attacked. We can say that these physical attacks are not only carried out by civilian fascist gangs, but also by ‘members of the security forces’ in collaboration with the Turkish State Security Organisation (TEM) and the National Intelligence Organisation (MİT), in an attack that goes as far as illegal one-time use phone numbers to call family members.

After 23 years of repressive policies targeting young people, a lack of future prospects, and the resulting housing and livelihood difficulties, it is futile to expect university students to remain silent in the face of oppression. Although the regime continues its attacks on youth, using all its power, both by attempting to organise division among university students through false propaganda and by using the power of the private security units, police, detentions, and fascist gangs with machetes, it is impossible to suppress the demands and struggle of youth, especially after 19 March, when the call of “enough is enough” grew louder and wider.

Similar to the canteen problem at Hacettepe and Dil Tarih, youth in many different provinces and localities, from religious boarding schools to state dormitories, from labour exploitation to MESEMs, face a lack of future and even death. As long as these conditions persist, the youth's stance against the one-man regime, combined with the experience and spirit of activism they gained during the 19 March process, should come as no surprise to the awakening and determined stance seen in universities.

We see that policies such as price increases and reservation systems, which even surround the right to eat, are now being implemented. This time, young people want to have a say in the generation and determination of their lives, from their dormitories to their canteens, in opposition to the government's efforts to narrow the public sector and make the Turkish economy even more neoliberal. After the events of 19 March, revolutionary ÖTKs, which represent the voice of students in many universities, are already striving to get students actively involved in school management.

Faced with a government that has spent 25 years stealing the people's voice and handing over all rights to speak on matters of life to company owners, palace officials and religious orders, there is a will among young people who stand up for their campuses, their dormitories, their rights to food and education, and who fight for their own words and opinions. Rulers in the palace who have lost all credibility and credit nationwide, a youth who has lost patience with representative political rituals in universities, and the helplessness of bringing out vulgar gangs in front of them, perhaps hoping to scare them.

Students have begun to organise and speak their own words wherever they are, from faculties and departments to dormitories. The struggle for autonomous and democratic universities, which has long been destroyed by the pressure of the government, reactionary fascist gangs, and trustee rectors, is rising from within the youth's own actions and words.

Looking at the example of the Yurdum Cafe resistance at Hacettepe before the 19 March process, students are more attached to their universities. The conditions at the universities they came to with the hope of building a future, and the conditions of the country, are forcing young people to become revolutionary. They are not only defending all the spaces they inhabit, their dormitories, their campuses, but they are also trying to transform these spaces, to become the owners of the word and the authority.

The inadequacy of the pressure exerted against the struggle raised around the students' demands has also alarmed the trusteeship rectors. The statements of the Hacettepe rectorate, which equates students with gangs with machetes targeting the students' legitimate protests, can also be seen as an indication of this. The trustees were the most important actors in the process of the university losing its right to speak and decide, the elimination of academic autonomy, and the university's direct subordination to the Palace. The trustees, who could not confront the students during our struggle at Hacettepe and who brought in the police to make arrests, are exactly the kind of universities the one-man ruler dreams of. Similar reactions emerged when students, whose voices had been silenced under this pressure for a long time, came together again. The “handover ceremony” held by outsiders at the university and the attacks on students by masked gangs with clubs are attacks directed at the university itself. Instead of targeting students seeking their most basic rights, such as accommodation and food, the rectorate, which is responsible for the security of the university, must explain how members of a gang, which has a history of mass killings such as Maraş, Çorum, Madımak, and the murder of intellectuals such as our teacher Bedrettin Cömert, and who are not even university students, were able to enter the campus. How can masked gangs with machetes enter the campus while students fighting for their democratic rights are arrested by police brought onto the campus? This is the question that needs to be answered by the trustees acting as rectors, both at Hacettepe and at all universities. Students want a free and democratic university; this is no longer a demand that can be concealed with lies or silenced with oppression. The urgency of the youth's real demands is clear in the face of a gang with no representation among university students terrorising the university. The university, which should be the centre of scientific thinking, cannot be left in the hands of gangs that are of no benefit to humanity. University students now closely recognise these gangs and their false propaganda. For an autonomous and democratic university, a humane future, and a democratic country, the youth are once again forging their own path in their struggle.

NOTES FROM THE STRUGGLE – EDUCATION LABOURERS: ACADEMICS SHOULD TAKE ACTION

The atmosphere affecting academia has its own particularities. The appointment of rectors, deans, and even department heads has largely undermined the relatively democratic and participatory functioning of departmental academic councils and faculty councils. The formation of university senates is also largely shaped by appointees. Therefore, we know that democratic and autonomous decision-making processes have been suppressed for years. When we add to this the reporting of academics in opposition positions to CİMER, the withdrawal of their teaching positions, obstacles to obtaining positions corresponding to their titles, and the introduction of severe mobbing conditions, we obtain a panorama of political pressure in academia. Add to this the gradual reduction in the number of academic staff, the increase in their workload, and insecure employment, and all the practices of pressure on academia, especially on research assistants and doctoral lecturers who have not yet gained assurance, fall into place.

It should be noted that in the current climate, the student movement is fighting harder for a democratic, autonomous university and improved living and material conditions. This has always been the case in the history of Turkish universities. The basis for bringing together the wider university youth and education and science workers is to emphasise the principle that this struggle is a struggle for democracy and livelihoods. Striving to organise education and science workers in unions that put their money where their mouth is during this process will be the most critical achievement. At the same time, it is the responsibility of academics to be present in the university senates, which have lost their departments and faculty councils, to voice the demands of the student movement in every corner of the university and not to leave them to the discretion of the administrators. There is also an urgent need to establish mechanisms that will strengthen the organic link between the trade union struggle of education and science workers and the student movement. This is because the fascist-paramilitary attacks against students are closely related to the isolation of the student movement from the common ground it could establish with the trade union struggle of education and science workers.

We hope that the student movement will emerge stronger from these policies of repression. During the events of 19 March, the waves of investigations directed at young people were met with both a broader organisation of university youth and a strengthening of the leadership role played by university youth. Today, we know with certainty that the fascist gangs that stand out with their provocations in universities have zero theoretical and practical capacity to lead the way on either the vital issues students face in their dormitories and canteens or the idea of a democratic and autonomous university that youth yearn for. These fascist practices, which have resorted to attacks with machetes, find no legitimate grounds for acceptance on campuses except among a handful of gang members who have embraced racist delusions and slave-like obedience. It is clear that the vital material and democratic demands voiced by a youth movement embraced by broad sections of society since the 19 March process cannot be suppressed through intimidation and investigations. What the broader university youth needs is more courage.

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FROM 19 MARCH TILL TODAY - THE WALLS OF FEAR HAVE BEEN TORN DOWN

• The new academic year at universities began with resistance centred around concrete demands. As is the case every year, schools started with canteen price increases, shortage of materials, and dormitory scandals. With the 19 March Resistance, young people who broke down the walls of fear stood up against the problems they faced.

• Istanbul University students protested on 8 October against the increase in canteen fees. Saying, ‘Two meals a day for 100 TL is not sufficient,’ the students demanded that the increases be withdrawn.

• Hacettepe University students also raised their voices against the rectorate’s decision to implement a reservation system. Stating that the right to eat cannot be reserved and that they refuse to pay extra to eat at their university, Hacettepe students distributed meals to fellow students instead of the cafeteria workers who were forced to work overtime. Although these protests were met with intervention by the police, the struggle for meals without reservations continued in the following days.

• Students at Ankara University's Faculty of Language, History and Geography also reacted to the price difference between lunch and dinner in the school canteen, despite various pressure tactics. Despite provocations by reactionary-fascist gangs, the protests continued with the slogan, ‘Let's unite for our right to education and our right to eat’.

• Students at Samsun Ondokuz Mayıs University also protested the price increase in their cafeteria and the university administration's decision to make Akbank cards mandatory. The students, who said, ‘We will not surrender our right to eat to the banks,’ stated that they would continue their struggle until their demands were met.

• The price increases in cafeterias were not the only struggle arising from the concrete and daily problems of university students. Neglect in state dormitories and the inadequacy of state scholarships were also pressing issues for young people.

• Students staying at the Gölbaşı State Dormitory in Ankara gathered in front of the dormitory to protest the long-standing shortage of hot water and poor food service, while students at the Cebelibereket Male Student Dormitory in Osmaniye began protests with similar demands around the same time.

• In the following days, Kasım Bulgan, a student staying at the Osmaniye Cebelibereket Male Student Dormitory, suffered a heart attack and died after taking a cold shower due to the lack of hot water in the dormitory. While his dorm friends reacted to Kasım's death, demonstrations were held in many provinces to demand improvements in the conditions at state dormitories. In Ankara, members of SOL Genç marched to the Provincial Directorate of Youth and Sports with the slogan ‘Kasım, Enes, Zeren, this system will be destroyed’ and were detained after the march. Hacettepe students also organised an action for Kasım Bulgan later that day.

• Like state dormitories, state scholarships are another issue where students do not receive sufficient support from the state. Students, who are expected to live on 100 TL per day, demanded an increase in state scholarships with the start of the new semester and protested against the conversion of scholarship cuts and dormitory expulsions into a punitive policy.

• Students reacted to allegations that the scholarships of students who participated in the 19 March protests in Mersin had been cut and that they had been expelled from their dormitories. In the following weeks, nine students were detained after making a press statement in Kadıköy, Istanbul, demanding that state scholarships be fixed at half the minimum wage and that all loan debts be written off. Protests with the same demands were also held in Ankara and İzmir.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Palalı çeteler görev başında: İktidarın hedefinde üniversiteler var, published in BirGün newspaper on November 2, 2025.