Boğaziçi University

In 1863, Robert College was founded in Bebek by Christopher Robert, a wealthy American philanthropist, and Cyrus Hamlin, a Congregational missionary devoted to education.^[9][10] Six years after its foundation, the first campus (the current-day Boğaziçi South Campus) was built on the ridge near Rumeli Hisarı (the Rumelian Castle) with the permission of Sultan Abdulaziz.^[9]

According to a college catalogue compiled for the 1878–1879 academic year, "the object of the College is to give to its students, without distinction of race or religion, a thorough education equal in all respects to that obtained at a first-class American college and based upon the same general principles."^[11]

After Cyrus Hamlin, the college was administered by George Washburn (1877–1903) and Caleb Gates (1903–1932).^[9] The college, which was established as an institution of higher learning independent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) yet holding a significant number of missionaries among its faculty in its earlier years, adopted an entirely secular and non-denominational educational model in 1923 in compliance with the new republican principles of Turkey.^[12]

Before 1971, Robert College, had junior high school, high school, and university sections under the names Robert Academy, Robert College, and Robert College Yüksek ('Yüksek" meaning "high" in Turkish). In 1971, the Bebek campus and academic staff of Robert College were turned over to the Republic of Turkey to be transformed into a public university named Boğaziçi University, the renamed continuation of Robert College's university section (i.e. Robert College Yüksek). The rest of Robert College moved into the Arnavutköy campus of the American College for Girls; despite continuing to call itself a college it became merely a high school."^[13]

On September 10, 1971, Robert College bequeathed today's South Campus of 118 acres, including buildings, the library, laboratories, and all facilities and personnel, to the Turkish government. Boğaziçi University was officially established as a Turkish public university. Since then, the university has gradually transformed from a small liberal arts college into a major research university.^[6]

Democratic Governance

At its inception, the university had a president and an administration, which was answerable to councils and committees made up of faculty members. All faculty, both senior and junior, attended the general assemblies, where important questions were discussed and decisions were made. ^[14]

The 1980 Turkish coup d'état affected participatory democracy at universities negatively, as it did many other institutions. During the years of martial law, Boğaziçi University was under the administration of a rector externally appointed by the newly established Council of Higher Education. During the normalization of politics in the post-coup period, faculty members of BU proposed a system for the election of the rector in 1992. Accordingly, the faculty members were to elect the rector. The Council of Higher Education accepted this model for all Turkish universities with a slight modification, whereby the names of the three candidates with the highest votes were to be submitted to the Council of Higher Education. The Council was to turn in one of these names, preferably the candidate with the highest vote, to the President of Turkey for appointment.

To ensure that their candidate with the highest vote would be appointed as rector, upon request from the BU faculty, the rector candidates accepted an informal agreement to reject the appointment, in the case they did not come in first and their name was the one submitted to the President. ^[15][16]

Seizure of Power

In 2016, the President did not appoint the Boğaziçi University candidate who received 86% of the votes but instead appointed Mehmed Özkan, the deputy of the former elected rector. Nevertheless, Özkan subsequently received a vote of confidence from the faculty.

The top-down appointment of Melih Bulu, an external candidate with close ties to the Justice and Development Party, on January 2, 2021 represented a radical and unprecedented intervention in the university's governance.^[17][18] Resistance and acts of protest by faculty, students, and alumni immediately followed. ^[19][20][21] More than 150 students were detained.^[22] The new rector dismissed the earlier faculty deans to appoint himself or candidates from outside the university to their positions.^[23]

Bulu was dismissed from the rectorship by President Erdoğan on July 15, 2021.^[24] Following this, Naci İnci, another government-backed contender was appointed to the office, despite receiving a 95% no confidence vote and the existence of 17 alternative candidates approved by the faculty.^[25][26]

The imposition of Bulu and İnci as rectors in spite of outspoken opposition from the faculty signaled a political takeover of Boğaziçi.^[27] The extensive executive powers granted to rectors under the Higher Education Law^[28] (which were de facto never implemented at Boğaziçi University due to its democratic governance history and institutional practice) mean that the university has become a microcosm of the country’s one-man rule.^[29]

Student and faculty resistance continues unabated in despite of legal bans.^[30] As of late 2023, daily protest vigils had taken place for more than 1,000 days.^[31]

Administrative and Academic Interventions

Unprecedented academic interventions followed immediately after the appointment of the first imposed rector Melih Bulu who initiated a set of operations to transform the university’s modus operandi.^[32] Such interventions continue in an accelerated manner under the second imposed rector, Naci İnci, since July 15 2021.^[33][34][35]

According to reporting by the Arab Studies Institute, “Decades-long procedures and rules concerning meetings, agenda setting, voting, and approval of minutes were consistently violated, Senate and Executive Board members being muted during on-line meetings and being treated with disrespect. Casting multiple votes to obtain favorable results in meetings became regular practice.”^[36]

Two new faculties and a graduate institute have been established by decree of the President of the State: the Faculty of Law,^[37] Faculty of Communication,^[38] and the Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence.^[39] Other faculties have been reorganized or disbanded.^[40][41]

In retaliation to the protests against the interventions of the new administration, a series of investigations were initiated against full- and part-time academicians, as well as retired and emeritus professors.^[42][43][44] Several faculty members were banned from teaching and entering the campus for months. The contracts of a number of teaching staff were not renewed; in cases taken to court, court decisions in favor of academicians were disregarded by the administration. The contracts of a number of academicians (both foreign and Turkish) were annulled. A number of retired and emeritus professors were banned from teaching and prohibited from entering the campus. ^[45][46]

Across virtually all faculties and academic units, duly elected faculty and administrators have been purged, with deans, department chairs, and vice-chairs removed from office and replaced by appointment. ^[47][48][49] As many as 100 new faculty members have been added outside of normal protocols.^[50][51][52]

There has been significant and unprecedented disruption of both teaching and research activities. Notably, the administration has prevented the faculty from determining which classes will be taught, and by whom. ^[53] In 2022, the offices of many research centers were evicted with very little or no notice. Belongings of the centers - files, documents, equipment, research projects, etc.-  were put in trash bags and dumped in remote locations on the campus^[54].  The centers thus removed from their offices include The Istanbul Mathematical Sciences Center,^[55][56][57] Peace Education Application and Research Center,^[58] and Social Policies Forum, the Archive and Documentation Center (staff dismissed, archives transferred to the university library and documentation center),^[59][60] Byzantine Studies Research Center (despite donation from an international funding agency for hosting various activities and supporting researchers and students), Human Development Research Center (while organizing an international conference), the Nazım Hikmet Arts and Culture Research Center and Telecommunications and Informatics Technologies Research Center.^[61][62]

On June 10, 2022, four professors from the University's Council of Information Technologies revealed the violation of General Data Protection Regulation rights of 60,000+ Boğaziçi members (students, academicians, personnel, and graduates).^[63] The whistleblowers have been met with reprisal including campus bans, lawsuits, and attempts to bar them from public service.^{[64][65][66][67][68]}Additional accusations of technical mismanagement have stemmed from an arbitrary and disruptive change to the university's domain name.^[69]

Finally, the seizure of the university also affected the institutional support system of the university such as the Boğaziçi Alumni Association^[70] which has been expelled from its social center in the main campus^[71][72] and the Boğaziçi University Foundation which has been taken over by the appointed administration by virtue of the right given to the rector by the original Trust Deed to periodically introduce new trustees.^[73][74]

Intervention in Campus and Student Life

Since immediately after Bulu's appointment, the university's campuses have been constantly surrounded by armed vehicles and police forces. The presence of increasing numbers of security personnel and plainclothes police officers in the campus is coupled with the installation of hundreds of surveillance cameras around the university premises.^[75]

Except for select members of pro-government media organizations, journalists are not allowed on the campuses. More than a hundred individuals with ties to Boğaziçi University, alumni, retired and emeriti faculty members, have been blacklisted by the appointed administration and are not allowed to enter the institution. A 2023 decision by the rectorate prohibited all retired and emeriti faculty members who are not currently teaching any courses from entering the university grounds. These measures have led to a serious depopulation of the campuses. ^[76][77][78]

Student life is being closely monitored by the usurping administration, with many students subjected to disciplinary investigation and punishment,^[79][80] and many student club activities constrained or censored. Especially vulnerable were members of the student LGBTI+ community, whose student club was banned, activities censored, and group members criminalized.^[81][82][83] In June 2023, the majority of student club offices located at a central dorm building located on the main campus (South Campus) were forcefully removed by security forces, and club facilities were relocated to a building situated at the fringes of the campus.^[84][85]

One policy element of the new regime is gender segregation of dorms^[86] and their removal from central campus grounds; as of Fall 2023, the South Campus has been exclusively reserved for women’s dorms. Gyms and pools have also had new rules instituted mandating gender segregation.^[87][88]

While the layout and texture of the historical core of the university remains intact, heavy security measures and police presence has had the effect of depopulating the campus and minimizing student socialization. Students, who made Boğaziçi a hub of vivid social and cultural activity, now prefer to spend time outside the campus grounds. Peaceful student demonstrations have been interrupted with force, as imposed rectors allowed anti-terror teams on the university grounds, resulting in the detainment and arrest of many students on different occasions. ^[89][90]

Resistance, Protests, and Solidarity

The ongoing resistance to the seizure of administrative control, which began with the 2021 Boğaziçi University protests, has received support through declarations and awards by national and international academic institutions and associations. The violations of academic freedom at the university have received significant attention in the media as well. ^[91][92]

Several mainstream TV channels have covered the resistance extensively on prime time news programs. Many TV stations have interviewed faculty members about the resistance. Many academicians have published articles in national and international press discussing the resistance and its rationale. ^{[93][94][95][96][97][98]}

The means of resistance of the faculty members include refusal to cooperate with the imposed administration, daily vigils, weekly bulletins, lawsuits, public statements, departmental joint declarations, open courses and presenting and defending the BU case at international conferences and academic associations.^{[99][100][101][102]} Over 200 lawsuits have been filed against the appointed administration, including those by individuals, deans, and academic departments.^[103]

Alumni of Boğaziçi University have supported the resistance by joining the vigils, organizing various events and public declarations.^[104] A large number of national and international institutions,^[105] as well as individuals including Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, and Judith Butler^[106][107] have acknowledged and expressed their support for the resistance of Boğaziçi University.

Boğaziçi University operates on seven campuses in Istanbul. Four of these campuses (South Campus, North Campus, Hisar Campus, and Uçaksavar Campus) are within walking distance to each other on a hill above the affluent district of Bebek on the European side of Istanbul, overlooking the Bosphorus (hence the name).

The South Campus is considered to be the most popular Boğaziçi University Campus. It houses various historic buildings of Robert College, including Hamlin, Washburn, Theodorus, Dodge, Albert Long and Anderson Halls as well as the Kennedy Lodge, named after John F. Kennedy, and currently serving as a welcoming facility for visiting professors and staff.^[108]

The North Campus is home to Aptullah Kuran Library, which contains more than 740,000 printed books, 800,000 e-books, 55,000 e-journals as well as an extensive collection of Braille books, and a collection of rare books and manuscripts.^[109][110]

The Kandilli Campus is on the opposite side of the Bosphorus in Çengelköy, and hosts the historic Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI).^[111]

The Kilyos Sarıtepe campus, located on the Black Sea coast, is home to a private beach. It is the first self-sufficient university campus in the world, meeting all of its electricity demands from its own wind power plant.^[112]

In 2022, the Anadolu Hisarı Campus, which was previously under the administration of Marmara University, was transferred to Boğaziçi University.^[113]

The university has ten dormitories on its different campuses. Boğaziçi's First Men's and Women's Dorms are housed in some of the oldest buildings in the historic South Campus and offer students the chance to participate in the university's active social life.

There are also four dormitories on Boğaziçi's North Campus. The First and Second North Campus Dormitories were opened in 198, the former for female students, the latter for males. They have similar 1980s modernist architectural designs. The Third North Campus Dorm was opened for female students in 2010. The Fourth Dormitory of the North Campus has been in service since 2011, and mainly accepts graduate students.

The Kilyos Campus Dormitories are approximately one hour's drive away from Boğaziçi South and North campuses. The First Kilyos Dormitory serves female students while the Second Kilyos Dormitory is for males.

The Superdorm and Kandilli Dorms also provide accommodation to Boğaziçi University students. The Kandilli Dormitory for female students opened in 2017 on the Kandilli Campus. The waste water collected from the bathrooms at the Kandilli Dorm is reused in the toilet reservoirs after treatment.^[114]

Boğaziçi University ranks first in Turkey and 197th internationally according to U.S. News & World Report 2021 Best Global Universities Rankings,^[121] and shares the fifth rank among Turkish universities according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings of 2021 (internationally: 601 – 800).^[118]

Taşoda Music Festival is organized by Boğaziçi University Music Club every spring. It is the most important amateur music festival held in Turkey and takes its name from Music Club's studio at the South Campus.^[122]

Every May the Boğaziçi Sports Festival is held at the South Campus and other university venues. Usually, some 300 to 800 students from all over the world come to compete in various events.^[123]

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

• Chemistry
• History
• Linguistics
• Mathematics
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Philosophy
• Physics
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Translation and Interpreting studies
• Turkish language and literature
• Western languages and literature (This department was formerly named English Language and Literature. In 2008, the content and courses were rearranged and the name was changed as well.)

Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences

• Economics
• Management
• Political Science and International Relations

Faculty of Education

• Computer Education and Educational Technology
• Foreign Language Education
• Educational Sciences
• Primary Education
• Secondary School Science and Mathematics Education

Faculty of Engineering

• Chemical Engineering
• Civil Engineering
• Computer Engineering
• Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Industrial Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering

Faculty of Managerial Sciences^[124]

• Management Information Systems
• International Trade
• Tourism Administration

School of Foreign Languages

• Advanced English
• English Preparatory Division
• Modern Languages Unit

Faculty of Law^[125]

• Law

Faculty of Communication

Institute for Graduate Studies in Sciences and Engineering

Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History

• Modern Turkish History (M.A., PhD)

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

• Biomedical Engineering (M.S., PhD)

Institute of Environmental Sciences

Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute

Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences

Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence^[126]

• Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (M.S.)

Other Units

• List of American universities and colleges outside the United States
• Robert College
• List of universities in Turkey
• List of universities in Istanbul
• Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (Istanbul Metro)

• Ata, Ranan. 2006. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi'nde Sonbahar. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
• Çıracıoğlu, Vecdi and Mustafa Baykan. 2013. Bilim Yolunda 100 Yıl: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
• Freely, John. 2012. A Bridge of Culture: Robert College-Bogazici University: How An American College in Istanbul Became A Turkish University. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
• Freely, John. 2009. A History of Robert College. Istanbul: YKY.
• Hamlin Cyrus, 2014. Among The Turks – My Life and Times. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları (Originally published separately by Robert Carter & Brothers, New York, 1878; and Congregational School and Publishing Society, Boston and Chicago, 1893).
• Kuran, Aptullah, 2013, Bir Kurucu Rektörün Anıları: Robert Kolej Yüksekokulu'ndan Boğaziçi Üniversitesi'ne. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
• Washburn, George. 2012. Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları (Originally published by Houghton Mufflin Company, Boston and New York, 1909).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Boğaziçi University.

• (in Turkish) Boğaziçi University home page
• (in English) Boğaziçi University main page

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