Etki Can Bolatcan
Canteen occupation, demands for decent dormitories, solutions to transportation problems, and dozens of other issues. In recent months, the Beytepe Campus has witnessed protests where students loudly demanded their most basic rights. With no hot water in the dormitories, mandatory reservations in the canteen, and the university being run like a corporation, these demands could not be expressed any other way.
There is only one reason behind the pro-government media outlets’ reports that “they disrupted the school” and the university administration’s claim that “there is no problem, the protesters are outsiders” and opening an investigation. The students, faculty, and staff of Hacettepe University are saying, “We want to have a say in the school administration.” They want a say in decisions that affect them at their school.
WARM AUTUMN
The new academic year, which began with dormitory expulsions and investigations, also brought with it many rights violations, negligence, and practices hostile to students.
In the days when Kasım Bulgan lost his life after suffering a heart attack following a cold shower due to the lack of hot water in the student dormitory in Osmaniye, Hacettepe students also encountered dormitories without hot water. Students protested on campus for hot water.
When the semester began, students encountered a “proliferation of attendance checks” in the attendance system. Believing that this would be used as a system of surveillance and that the rectorate was opening the door to capital, they protested the practice. In recent days, reactions to the decision to require reservations in the cafeterias have continued.
Now academics are also participating in the protests started by students at Hacettepe University. The academics we met during the cafeteria action emphasized three points.
• The political response to the students’ concrete demands on campus is the result of a sensitive and patient struggle process.
• The boycott organized by students during the March 19 process brought life back to campus life, which had lost its spirit for years.
• The fact that they distributed their own food and cleaned the cafeteria during the cafeteria protest has symbolic meaning. They are sending the message that the university’s decision-making and implementation processes should be carried out by the university’s own constituents. The student movement has become the voice of the campus’s collective will. All education and science workers, including academics and administrative staff, are following the student protests with sympathy.
Hacettepe students are aware of the responsibility they have taken on. We spoke with a student friend from the Mathematics Department: “It was an important step to realize that the solution to the problems in students’ daily lives lies with the students themselves and cannot be expected from the trustees. We are not just looking for solutions to the problems of our school; we are showing that we have the will to transform every area we exist in. People who have never been to Yurdum Cafe are coming to support the resistance, and people who don’t live in the dorms are demanding ‘hot water’ for their friends. The struggle enables us to find the power within ourselves to produce solutions to every problem.”
The struggle at Hacettepe has long since gone beyond being just a university struggle and has already turned into the common will of those who stand together for a livable country.
∗∗∗
WE HAVE OBJECTIONS!
The intervention in the closing hours of Yurdum Cafe, located in the Dormitory Area of the Beytepe Campus and the only place where students can catch their breath at night, caused a huge reaction among students.
Students said, “We will not abandon our living spaces,” regarding Yurdum Cafe, whose closing hours were changed without any justification. Hacettepe students, who stood shoulder to shoulder in resistance against the targeting of campuses—one of the few places where young people can freely exist under the reactionary siege of the country—by the AKP, gained important experience through days of solidarity and struggle.
The rectorate’s decision to suspend the use of student cards and redirect them to YapıKredi Bank as part of an agreement with YapıKredi Bank sparked reactions.
In mid-November 2023, two suicides occurred within two weeks in dormitories belonging to Hacettepe University. During a period when four students committed suicide in one month, Hacettepe students, believing their friends were condemned to darkness, held demonstrations in the dormitories and on the campuses. Saying, “We will not lose another friend because of this system,” the young people of Hacettepe increased their solidarity against despair on their campuses.
∗∗∗
MARCH 19 TAUGHT US
The student movement at Hacettepe, united around concrete claims such as the right to housing, student suicides, and femicide, also played a leading role in the protests that began after Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained. After the barricades in Beyazıt were torn down and the will that spilled out from METU into the streets grew, Hacettepe became one of the finest examples of united student opposition in all areas of struggle, from METU to Bilkent, from neighborhoods to streets, with forums attended by all students and educational boycotts.
Hacettepe became a united struggle ground where democratic, patriotic, republican, revolutionary, and socialist youth could stand shoulder to shoulder against the AKP government. With the political atmosphere created on March 19, Hacettepe took ownership of the problems and struggles across the country, from protests against reactionary actors infiltrating Boğaziçi University to commemorations of the Soma Mine Massacre.
∗∗∗
MORE SOLIDARITY
Hacettepe students who defended campus life at Yurdum Cafe were expelled from their dormitories under the pretext of an investigation opened months earlier. Following this move to suppress the student movement after March 19, the decision was overturned thanks to the students’ determined struggle and solidarity, and the students were allowed back into the dormitories.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Üniversiteler bizimdir, published in BirGün newspaper on October 18, 2025.
