Leave alone Bosphorus University and BÜFK!

The Bosphorus University Folklore Club (BÜFK), which has carried out avantgarde work aiming to study different cultures and to promote their dances and music, was openly pinpointed as a target last week when a performance they conducted at the university was criticized aggressively by the media.

In an environment rife with political tension, the threat of a coup d’état, and war in Northern Iraq, it is no coincidence that a freedom-loving university and a student community standing for a peaceful co-existence with others are being served up in a provocative fashion to the masses ready to be provoked.

This attack on a university that decided, though it was none of their business, to hold a conference on the Turkish-Armenian problem and gave an honorary Ph.D to an author like Orhan Pamuk whose treason to the motherland has been registered by the Nobel Academy and on a club that embraced, besides Turkish, those muted languages such as Kirmanji, Zaza, Greek, Romany and Armenian, shows us perhaps that the dirty waters of the dark tunnels we are passing through have now swelled up to our throats.

It is time to support Bosphorus University, one of the few institutions where freedom of thought exists in the country, and a troupe which has flourished in Bosphorus University’s 130 year old oasis.

Translated by Deniz Akkuş

May 25, 2007