Kamil Pasha

It seems the incident that sparked the violent outbreak at Akdeniz University a few days ago (see my April 7 post) was personal, not political — a male student verbally harrassing a female student, and when he was told off, sneaking into her dorm and sexually harrassing her. A female friend tried to protect her, then other men inside and outside the dorm became involved until the two groups went after each other with sticks and chains. Two people, both non-students, used guns. According to news accounts, one group consisted of “PKK sympathizers”, the other — including the female student’s fiance — “ultranationalists”. (click for article in Turkish)(article in English)

All of which does not preclude outside provocation, but rather shows how the groups are primed to react to every spark with a conflagration. The tensions apparently had been mounting for weeks. Clearly, students have been walking around looking for a fight. Clearly, armed outside provocateurs already moved among them. Add to that a hair-trigger, violent, martial cult of masculinity, and a large number of young men with no immediate prospects for the future (see my post on unemployment), and you have an informal army ready to be pointed in a direction and set off. Multiply this across the nation and you have the potential for big trouble. Trouble-on-demand. The question is, who is holding the matches?

Tags: Education, Nationalism, Politics //