TURKEY: Academics quit over president's rector choices

More than a dozen senior Turkish academics resigned last week in protest at President Abdullah Gul's choice of university rectors, a sign of renewed tensions between the secularist establishment and the government, reports The Peninsula in Qatar. Turkish media said several rectors who support the ruling AK Party, including those favourable to ending a ban on students wearing the Muslim headscarf on campus, had been picked over secularist professors.

Gul appointed new rectors for 21 universities on Tuesday, but rejected several candidates proposed by the Higher Education Board, which has traditionally been a vocal defender of the secular principles established by modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Gul declined to appoint nine of the 21 candidates who won their university elections, Hurriyet newspaper said. Instead, he named professors who were second or third in the voting.

A government-led drive to lift a ban on headscarves on campus was recently rejected as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, caused protests in universities and prompted a prosecutor to initiate the court case against the ruling party.

Twelve professors and teachers at Istanbul Technical University resigned their posts to protest the appointment of Muhammed Sahin, who was not the first choice of the university. Several more academics resigned at Ankara's Gazi University, broadcaster NTV said.
Full report on The Peninsular site