Hello. You probably have heard of this new hashtag on twitter and wondered what is going on. Im Deniz Demirci, a Turkish student and im here to explain what’s going on with all this.
Turkey was the topic of another hashtag called #dayanbogazici (which means Resist, Bogazici!) recently, and those two are against the same issue. The ignorance of Turkish Ministry of Education. Let me start explaining from the first issue.
Rectors of Bogazici University is usually chosen by elections that are held inbetween the students and teachers. In January 02, 2021, the new rector for the University was ASSIGNED directly by president Erdoğan, without holding an election or even asking the opinions of the students which resulted in students protesting. Then, LGBT people joined the protesting even though they had nothing to do with the university. Terrorists followed the LGBT, and protested for their own violent causes. Therefore, lots of innocent students who just wanted democracy were arrested and called terrorists.
The new issue is different though. #TurkishStudentLivesMatter is about the exams. 2 sets of exams are held in Turkish schools to determine the studens grade. But this shouldn’t be the case due to covid. The government cannot just have students sitting next to each other for each day for 2 weeks. Some students have parents or grandparents with chronic diseases. This would certainly kill them if the students brought the virus home. The students have been protesting with millions of tweets since then, and the protest became international last day. Despite students’ efforts, Turkish Ministry of Education refuses to cancel the exams.
