By Emma McGrath, News Staff
Following weeks of anti-government protest in Turkey, Northeastern officials have taken steps to minimize the impact on students by removing them from the country and altering upcoming study abroad programs.
“We had three co-ops in Turkey, and arranged for their return upon learning of the unrest,” said Lucy Warsh, the university’s associate director of communications. Northeastern will not send students to Turkey for the July through December co-op cycle, she added.
Students who planned to study in Turkey on the Summer II Dialogue of Civilizations program to Istanbul and Berlin have also seen a change of plans; instead of spending two weeks in Istanbul, they will now spend the first half of their trip in Bodrum, Turkey, a smaller city on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The second half of the trip in Germany remains unaltered.
The decision to reroute the program, made by a risk assessment committee within the Office of International Studies Programs, was approved by Provost Stephen Director on Monday.
The re-routing of these programs was met with acceptance by some students.
“The more I read about the violence in Istanbul, the more I expected the trip to be cancelled,” said Jason Dack, a junior finance major signed on for the Dialogue. “I don’t fault the school for rerouting the trip; I’m thankful they were able to find an alternative.”
Bodrum, Dack said, should still provide an enriching cultural experience, even though it is far removed from the more “socially active and modern” city of Istanbul.
Ana Tarbetsky, a sophomore sociology major who will also participate in the Dialogue, described herself as “ambivalent” about the new route, but said her family was pleased to hear of the changes.
“My mom seemed rather relieved that we weren’t going to Istanbul because she had been following the news and had decided that Istanbul was not a safe place for me to be,” she said.
Tarbetsky herself, however, believed the trip could have been made safely under the guidance of the program’s faculty leader, international affairs professor Berna Turam.
“I trusted that Berna would know how to handle the situation.” Tarbetsky said. “They’re taking cautionary measures to ensure that they are not to blame for any accidents that could occur.”
Turam, an associate professor of sociology at Northeastern who has researched the politics of urban space, said in an email that the university’s decision was made for security reasons.
Taksim Square, the primary protest site in Istanbul, is located about two miles away from the hotel students where were scheduled to stay. The square, Turam said, has historically been a site of resistance.
“It is conducive for demonstrations as it is large and in the middle of the city,” she said. “The labor protests on May 1 and many other demonstrations have been typically organized in Taksim Square.”
The demonstrators, who have rallied against growing authoritarianism from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), have been met with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets from Turkish police. The crackdown, along with government threats to deploy military forces against the protesters, has angered many and led some analysts to compare the situation to the Arab Spring.
Turam, however, rejected the comparison.
“Unlike the Arab Spring, the Gezi protestors did not aim to topple and replace the government,” she said. “While the Arab Spring demanded the majority’s rights to establish democracy, the Turkish resistance stood up against the consequences of democratic majoritarianism.”
Erdogan, who was democratically elected in 2002, 2007 and 2011, has drawn criticism from liberals and secularists in recent years for allowing Islam to infiltrate public policy, censoring the press and carrying out large-scale urban development projects without public support. The latter accusation sparked the current unrest: Erdogan’s plans to destroy Gezi Park, one of Istanbul’s last green spaces, led local environmentalists and activists to protest. The police’s heavy-handed crackdown on those groups incited a more intense backlash from Turks across political lines.
Despite its apparent spontaneity, Turam said, the Gezi resistance “will be remembered as a turning point in Turkish history” for bringing to the surface latent dissatisfaction and uniting people across the diverse country.
Though they will have to study Istanbul from afar, both Dack and Tarbetsky said they remain excited for their upcoming trip.
“Going to Bodrum, I feel, will be a great experience, because it’s a place where not as many people go,” Tarbetsky said. “I think we’ll really be able to see a new culture.”
