UNIVERSITY LAWSUITS, ACADEMIC FREEDOM, AND JUDICIAL REVIEW OF YÖK BUREAUCRACY
The Historical Clash Between University Autonomy and YÖK Bureaucracy
Universities are autonomous academic spaces that should serve as the most fundamental bastions of universal knowledge production, critical reasoning, and free thought. However, the mechanism of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) and the centralist reflexes of university administrations frequently leave this autonomy merely on paper, transforming them into the epicenter of administrative decisions, disciplinary investigations, and staff allocation blockages that replace merit with loyalty. Disputes arising between university management and academic personnel or students go beyond a classical administrative action; they represent a deep conflict between the freedom of science and bureaucratic tutelage. Arbitrary dispositions executed by the administration under the guise of “public interest” poison the academic basin and render the individual’s freedom to seek rights an absolute necessity.
Student Disciplinary Investigations and the Asymmetric Violation of the Right to Education
The “right to education and learning,” one of the most fundamental constitutional rights of university youth, is subjected to severe pressure through arbitrary disciplinary investigations initiated as a result of the exercise of freedom of expression or democratic protest rights within the campus. Processes conducted within the scope of the Higher Education Institutions Student Disciplinary Regulation are administrative mechanisms where, for the most part, the right to defense is restricted, evidence is evaluated unilaterally, and irreversible penalties such as “suspension/expulsion” are handed down on unfounded grounds. Unless these disciplinary penalties—which darken a young person’s future, professional career, and years of effort in seconds—are subjected to a legality review before administrative courts, they lead to irreversible social wounds.
Academic Staff Purges, Jury Biases, and the Article 50/d Status Crisis
The legal deadlocks encountered by research assistants and assistant professors advancing on the rungs of an academic career constitute the most technical front of university law lawsuits. Particularly, the practice of terminating the staff affiliations of research assistants employed within the scope of Article 50/d of Law No. 2547 after the completion of their doctoral studies (the precariousness crisis) can be utilized as a “purge” tool in the academic world. Similarly, in the processes of appointment to associate professorship or professorship positions, blocking academic titles through “tailor-made staff announcements” created completely independently of scientific criteria or subjective, hostility-driven jury reports constitutes severe legal violations that make the judicial registration of merit mandatory.
Administrative Judiciary Practice in University Disputes
In the resolution of academic and administrative disputes, proceeding from the principle that the “discretionary power of university administrations is not absolute,” the following administrative judiciary mechanisms are operated:
- Promptly filing Stay of Execution and Annulment Lawsuits in Administrative Courts against unjust suspension or expulsion disciplinary penalties rendered against students, thereby preventing the interruption of education;
- Having academic staff appointment actions annulled by refuting through independent expert examinations that jury reports are far from scientific impartiality and are subjective (allegations of academic plagiarism or inadequacy) in academic staff appointments;
- Operating administrative judiciary review against the unjust affiliation-severing (staff purge) actions of research assistants with 50/d status on the grounds of violation of public interest and the requirements of the service.
The defense conducted in the field of university law is the reconstruction—through judicial power—of academic freedom, merit, and the future of youth that are attempted to be crushed behind those thick bureaucratic walls of the administration.
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