In an unexpected overnight move right before the fifth anniversary of the failed 2016 putsch, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan removed Melih Bulu from his contested post as rector at Istanbul’s Bogazici University, one of Turkey’s most prestigious higher education institutions. 

The sacking, interpreted as backpedaling by Erdogan, comes after months of protests by Bogazici students and academics as well as their supporters across Turkey against the political appointee.    

That the man who was installed in the coveted post by an overnight decree was removed by another was not lost on Turkey’s political and academic circles. “Gone as he has come,” tweeted Faik Oztrak, the spokesman of the opposition Republican People’s Party. Others have posted a poem: “Roses are red, violets are blue, after 192 days of protests, Bogazici got rid of Melih Bulu.” 

“Bulu said that the protests against him would be over in six months; instead, it is his term in office that has ended,” Biray Kolluoglu, a sociology professor and former dean of student affairs at the Bogazici University, told Al-Monitor. “This, of course, is quite a success for the university’s students and academics who have stood for academic freedoms despite all the suppression.”