by James Crickton

Two months ago, in September, as higher education institutions opened in Turkey and students started returning to their classes, they faced an unusual crisis. They could not find a place of accommodation. The problem was exacerbated by high fees and insufficient capacities of dormitories.

Irked by the Turkish government’s apathy towards the housing problem of students, Turkish University students started a movement called ‘We can’t find shelter’ in mid-September 2021.

On October 06, 2021, the students took to the streets in blankets to protest the government’s continued failure to provide them with homes or dormitories. The movement that started in Istanbul and Ankara, soon spread all over Turkey and youth from different ages, schools and jobs started movements under different names, like ‘Movement of the Unsheltered’, ‘We Cannot Find Housing’, ‘Youth Movement Coordination’ and ‘Those Without a Place to Stay’.

However, none of the students’ demands including affordable housing have been met so far. The Turkish Government, instead of helping the students, attacked them with law enforcement.

Addressing a public gathering on Sept 27, 2021, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan referred to the protesting students as ‘another version of the Gezi Park events’, referring to the countrywide anti-government protests attended by millions of people in 2013.

He called the protesters ‘liars’ and ‘so-called’ students. Hours after he spoke, police dispersed the students in parks in Istanbul and Izmir, detaining nearly 80 of them, but students continue to stay in parks at nights and hold protest marches with blankets, demanding affordable housing.

There are about eight million university students in Turkey, a country of 83 million people, with millions of students studying far away from their hometown.

Rent prices have increased excessively throughout the country, especially in big cities, over the past year. According to a study by Bahcesehir University, rents in Istanbul, the largest city of Turkey, increased by over 50 per cent in August compared to the same month in 2020.

Amid university students’ protests for affordable housing, the Social Democracy Foundation Youth Organization (SODEV Youth) has released a report on state dormitories in Turkey. The report shows that while the number of students in Turkey increased by 1.62 per cent during 2020-2021, the capacity of dormitories dropped by 2.47 percent in the same year.  

According to the SODEV Youth report, during this period, 20 state dormitories of the Higher Education Credit and Hostels Institution (KYK) were closed. On a provincial basis, the number of beds dropped by 426 in Istanbul, 196 in Ankara and 156 in Izmir over the last year. While there are 802,131 university students in Istanbul, there are only 24,651 beds in total in dormitories.

The SODEV Youth report also mentions the economic hardships faced by the young students in Turkey. In addition to the depreciation of the Turkish Lira against foreign currencies, high inflation rates have contributed to the decrease in purchasing power of student credits, the report adds.

While the Turkish students are on road for lack of accommodation, the Ministry of National Education has allocated 1.2 million lira (135 million USD) for the Maarif Foundation, a state-funded education organization operating overseas. The Opposition accused the government of using the foundation to ‘transfer country’s education budget to its partisans’. Had this budget been used for building dormitories, no student would be left without a dormitory in two years, the Opposition lamented pointing out that the students have been in protest mode due to high housing prices and insufficient dorm capacities.

Turkey aims to become the educational hub of the world. To achieve this, it started Turkey Scholarships in 2012 which received around 40,000 applications in its first year, increasing to 150,000 applications in 2019.

Turkey Scholarships claimed to differ from other scholarship programmes in the world by providing students with the excellent social, cultural, and academic extra-curricular programmes and activities while they are in Turkey. However, the recent students’ movements have brought out the reality and busted the ‘Turkey centre of education excellence’ bubble.

Ankara should recognize that students are the building blocks of a nation. Therefore, if it wants to have a strong foundation, the problems of students must be solved on priority. Perhaps Turkey’s interests would be better served if it focuses on its internal issues rather than trying to spread its tentacles abroad.

—– The writer is a London based business consultant, and blogger

….