ÖES

Union of Teaching Staff (Öðretim Elemanlarý Sendikasý)

METU Branch (ODTÜ Þubesi)

As members of teaching staff in universities in Turkey we encounter many professional problems, some of which are common with other civil servants’. We have organized in the Union of Teaching Staff (ÖES) to solve the problems that are related to universities and formed the Confederation of Unions of Public Employees with other civil servant unions to counter common problems. Although, Turkey signed related ILO conventions, the state does not recognize those unions.

The history of higher education in Turkey is a history of state intervention for political reasons that goes as much as to mass expulsions of both students and the faculty, or to imprisonment of them for their writings, one of the most striking examples being, Dr. Ýsmail Beþikçi, a sociologist, who has now served about 12 years in prison, facing about 100 years more.

The recent intervention by the state, after the military coup-d’etat in 1980, the faculty members expelled from the universities without being charged with any crime or by a court decision , but a mere order by the commanders of districts under martial law, followed by forming a Higher Education Council which controls every university in Turkey to standardize them without any regard to their needs, development levels etc., and to establish the hegemony of the official ideology. Academicians who resisted, for example Dr. Fikret Batkaya, an economist served 15 months under the terms of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, had to take into account dire consequences.

The “Privatization”, one of the arm of attacks of “Globalization” also effected higher education in Turkey as well as other areas. The “private” universities have gotten land-grants or even free lands from the state, whereas the “public” universities’ budgets become slimmer, although students had been required to pay fees after 1980’s, to the extent that they cannot afford some periodicals or lab materials.

ÖES believes that those problems can only be solved by active organized union movements and welcomes international solidarity, since they are common in the international scale as well, for the so called Globalization.

For communication   : oes@rorqual.cc.metu.edu.tr
URL                  : http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwoes