The Science of Turkey: the 21st century as a country with more universities, more publications, more universities — Now is the time for change

But researchers question if this will stop government interference. If the AKP wins, “we will do our best to pass all these findings [of the report] to them and to convince them that this is for the sake of the country, to make Turkey a better country, with more universities internationally recognized within the top 100”, says Özgüven. But “we don’t know whether they will do it or not”, he adds.

In the 11 general elections since the restoration of civilian rule in 1983, political parties have pledged to abolish the YÖK. The justice and development party of the president has been in power for over a decade. Yet never in 21 years has the AKP attempted to follow through. Like other governments before it, it has instead used the YÖK as a convenient centralized tool for imposing its ideology.

But this was also something of a turning point. I was elected to the executive board of Boazii University and chair of the senate subcommittee on restructuring university governance. I was one of the faculty members who filed a number of lawsuits against the university and YK.

But I see a real opportunity for change now, partly because science in Turkey is in the public eye as never before. The value of science has soared after the COVID-19Pandemic and the earthquakes in southeast Turkey. Scientists have warned the public for years about the consequences of an earthquake, and they have made the scientific evidence readily available. It is clear to many that lives could have been saved had the science been heeded.

These systems include perverse incentives. Turkey began to pay academics for each paper they published. And since 2000, a scoring system dominated by international publications has been used to assess tenure claims. The number of publications has gone up, but there have also been cases of author–citation networks, dishonesty and predatory publishing.

The science council in Turkey is no longer ruled by the AKP government: the centennial anniversary of the formation of the modern republic

The science council in Turkey was approached by nature. The council couldn’t arrange interviews before the article was published. YÖK did not respond to requests for comment.

Turkey is marking the 100th anniversary of the formation of the modern republic. “We cannot go into the new century of the republic like this; the next 100 years cannot be like this,” says Taner Bilgiç, an industrial engineer at Boğaziçi University, and another co-author of the report.

The AKP promised to change the administrative structure of universities and to form a board of trustees in its election manifesto. The annual number of doctorate graduates is to be increased by it.

Özgüven was elected by academic colleagues to be METU’s rector in 2016, having received the most votes among 10 candidates, according to METU. But YÖK, instructed by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, revoked the election results and appointed the second-placed candidate, petroleum engineer Mustafa Verşan Kök.

YÖK ordered more than 8,500 university staff to resign during a state of emergency after the failed coup. Although the emergency was lifted two years later, the AKP government changed the law to give Turkey’s president the authority to appoint or dismiss university rectors without faculty elections in public and private universities. Boazii University in Istanbul had a protest against the appointment of a non faculty member as its new rector. Around 40 students were arrested and 16 academics were suspended at the time, and protests are continuing.

The Council of Higher Education was established after a military coup. Although Turkey has had many elected governments since 1983, YÖK continues to exist. It approves teaching courses, decides who should be appointed to faculty positions and sets student numbers.

Turkey’s researchers are calling for the abolition of a government-run council that they say has too much control over the nation’s universities, ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 May.

Opposition alliance agrees it’s time for military-era council to go. There are calls for the body to be axed with the power to hire and fire academics.