The Great Turkish Brain Drain
by Burak Bekdil • December 20th
- Scores of academics (more than 265) who signed the "peace call" are being prosecuted on charges of terrorism.
- "Most better [academics] tend to leave the country," said one university professor in Ankara on condition of anonymity, himself in correspondence with two US universities for a teaching position.
- "Children who do not read the Quran are with Satan and Satanic people." — Professor Ali Erbaş, Turkey's top cleric, head of the Turkish government's powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).
Dr. Yavuz Örnek, a pro-government academic from Istanbul University's Marine Sciences Faculty, claimed that technology was more advanced in the times of the Prophet Noah than it is today, saying Noah had talked to his son on a mobile phone in order to convince him to come aboard his nuclear-powered ark. Pictured: Istanbul University. (Image source: Mimihitam/Wikimedia Commons)
This author once described a Turkish university as "just a group of buildings gathered around a library and a mosque," to paraphrase a quote from Shelby Foote. Today, universities in Turkey are increasingly becoming seats of Islamic learning, zeal and government bootlicking.
Life, for many scholars, is gloomy. Since the attempted coup in July 2016, nearly 6,000 academics have been dismissed from public universities under emergency decrees, including 378 who had signed a January 2016 Academics for Peace petition condemning the government's security operations in the Kurdish southeast. Another 38 academics from public universities and 48 from private universities have been dismissed by their universities and were told by university officials that the reason was signing the petition. Scores of academics (more than 265) who signed the "peace call" are being prosecuted on charges of terrorism.
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