Following a statement by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday that the government will clean “communist and terrorist students” out of universities, Turkish police on Sunday morning detained more students at İstanbul’s Boğaziçi University, Cumhuriyet reported.
According to the report the students were detained in police raids on their homes and dormitories at 6 a.m., although the exact number of detainees is unknown.
On March 19 a group of students protested other students who had set up a stand and distributed Turkish delight in memory of Turkish soldiers killed during the Turkish military’s operation in Afrin, Syria. Police identified 17 of the protestors and detained five of them, while 12 are still being sought.
Erdoğan on Saturday lambasted the Bogaziçi University students at his party meeting in Samsun province.
Describing the youths who had set up stands for slain soldiers as “believers, local and national,” Erdoğan slammed the protestors, calling them “communists, traitors and terrorists.”
“Those are terrorist youths. We will conduct investigations into them. After identifying them, we will not let them get an education at the universities because a university is not a place for educating terrorist youths. A university educates the generation who will serve their country and nation,” Erdoğan said during a speech at his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) congress at Yaşar Doğu Sport Hall in the Tekkeköy district of Samsun.
Erdoğan in January said Boğaziçi University had failed to become a global brand because it “does not rely on national values.”