Police in Turkey broke up a protest by women and detained a group of women who wanted to read a news release against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plan to build the country’s first university for women.
Ankara Kuğulu Park’ta “Kadın Üniversitesi İstemiyoruz!” diyerek bir araya gelen üniversiteli kadınlara polis saldırdı. En az 10 kadın gözaltına alındı. Etrafımızı istediğiniz kadar ablukaya alın: Yök, polis, medya! Bu abluka dağıtılacak!#kadınüniversitesiistemiyoruz pic.twitter.com/cm4Jelyqdv
– Üniversiteli Kadın Kolektifi (@kadinkolektifi) February 16, 2021
The event happened on Tuesday in Ankara’s famous “Kogulu” park, where many activists were rallying under the title “We do not want a women’s university.” However, the police attacked them and tore down their signs.
Through its social networking account, the “University Students’ Association” called for the detainees to be freed right away, saying, “You will not be able to silence Bogazici or the women’s struggle.”
The statement said, “We do not want a guardian of the university and we do not want a women’s university.” It was talking about Erdogan’s choice of Malih Polo, who is close to the ruling Justice and Development Party, as head of Istanbul’s Bogazici University.
Later, the group said that all of the women who were being held had been freed.
Turkey’s plan for the first university for women was included in the “Annual Presidential Program for 2021,” which led to a campaign by a number of women’s groups on social media on Tuesday.
Trump first talked about the idea of women’s universities when he went to Japan in 2019 for the G20 meeting. He said at the time in Osaka that having 80 universities for women in Japan was “a very important thing” and that he thought it would be possible to do the same thing in Turkey.
People were angry about the idea, especially women’s rights campaigners, but Erdogan kept working on it.
