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Rector stands up to media bullies to defend folklore team’s right to sing out
"If they want to quarrel with me, tha’s fine. But it's a disgrace to pick on our students. Imagine how the parents of that girl must feel to discover their daughter being targeted as if she were a criminal," said Ayşe Soysal, the university rector. She said the students were not dressed as soldiers but in native dress from the town of Bitlis and that they were simply performing for a visiting Mexican folklore troupe a routine that had been in their club's repertoire for more than five years. "It's hard to understand why Hürriyet should suddenly take notice," Soysal commented.
In a bylined column yesterday, Sabah Editor in Chief Ergun Babahan made reference to the Hürriyet article, which he depicted as an attempt to extract revenge for a ceremony organized earlier this week by Bosphorus University to present Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk with an honorary doctorate. The university was being punished for having "crossed a red line" in paying tribute to the controversial novelist, Babahan wrote. He described the press coverage of the folkloric event as "fascist" and intended to polarize political attitudes.
The folklore performance took place on the same night as the Pamuk ceremony. There had been few people in attendance; however, photos and text was sent anonymously to major newspapers "like an informer's letter," all of whom declined to publish the story. Hürriyet was the exception, publishing the distributed text verbatim, according to Bosphorus University sources.
Hürriyet was unique in sending a photographer and reporter to the Pamuk doctoral ceremony and not referring to the story except in a matter of fact way by its venerable arts columnist, Dogan Hizlan.
"Everyone I've spoken to assumes that the doctorate for Orhan Pamuk is behind the article, but I can't say that myself," Rector Soysal said. Hürriyet was among the most vociferous in attacking Pamuk for referring to the deaths of Armenians in 1915 in a press campaign that led to the author being put on trial in December 2005 for "insulting Turkishness."
Innuendo that Bosphorus University had become a hotbed of anti-Turkish radicalism was "The Empire fighting back," according one Bosphorus University professor. Many inside the university share the conviction that they have become the victims of a grudge campaign and have now organized a letter signed by faculty members expressing pride in the university's tradition of academic freedom and free artistic expression.
The University Folklore Club has cancelled a performance scheduled for tonight in protest and will be holding a discussion instead.
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