Turkiye shutters liberal Istanbul university seized in criminal probe

Turkiye has revoked the operational licence ⁠for ⁠a top private university with liberal values, effectively forcing it to close in the middle of the academic year, after the institution was seized ⁠by the state in a criminal investigation last year.

In a presidential decree, published in the Official Gazette on Friday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revoked the operating licence for Istanbul Bilgi University, which has an estimated 20,000 students from Turkiye and across the world.

The decree said the closure is effective immediately.

The edict cites a law allowing the closure of the independent school if “the expected level of education and training … is insufficient”.

Bilgi University management has not issued a statement regarding the closure of the institution.

Last year, the school was seized by the state in a criminal investigation after its parent company, Can Holdings, was caught up in a money laundering and tax fraud sweep. Since then, Bilgi University has been run by a court-appointed administrator.

Turkiye’s Council of Higher Education promised to take “the necessary measures” to ensure the students at the social sciences university, who were due to sit end-of-year exams in June, “suffer no harm”.

Turkish local broadcaster TRT Haber reported that students will continue their education at Mimar Sinan University, the guarantor state university.

Videos of dozens of students protesting at the university circulated online. Some held banners that said, “This is just the beginning, the struggle continues.”

Yamen Akdeniz, Bilgi professor of law wrote on X, that an “institution built with 30 years of effort was effectively shut down overnight”.

The institution was founded in 1996, and is known for its liberal values. The school’s motto is “learning not for school but for life”. It currently ranks at 1,401 in the world according to QS World University ranking.

Bilgi University takes part in the Erasmus Mundus programme.