14 November 2009 / SABAH EMRE AKÖZ,
Can Turkish universities research the Kurdish issues in our country? From one of my readers who is working on her Ph.D. thesis in the US, I received a “not surprising message” recently on this matter.
In short, she said: “At two different universities in Turkey, I wanted to do my Ph.D. thesis on the relations between the state and Kurds. But neither of these universities would grant me permission for this. In Turkey, the university as an institution sees itself as a servant of the state when it comes to matters of social science and the law. And Turkish academics show special care in not straying outside the official ideology on these matters. Some academics behave this way because they truly believe in the official ideology, while others do it because they are afraid of what might happen to them if they don’t. And so, here is official ideology: to look at everything with a political eye and to either block or censure everything that doesn’t serve Kemalism!”
