Police arrested seven students from Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused them of behaving like “terrorists” for staging a protest against Turkey’s military campaign in Syria. According to lawyer İnayet Aksu, police stormed a students’ dormitory and a house at the university around dawn on March 25 and detained three students. With the latest detentions, the number of students being held by the police rose to seven. Erdoğan on March 24 had called a group of students at Boğaziçi University “terrorists” because of views on Turkey’s military campaign in Syria. In a show of protest, a group of students unfurled anti-war banners. Aksu said that expression could disturb but it cannot be considered a crime under the Turkish penal code. Erdoğan had called the protesters “communists” and “terrorists” at a provincial congress of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Black Sea province of Samsun.
