Professor Ayşe Soysal, a former rector of Boğaziçi University, said “academic freedom” is a distant idea for many Turkish universities and that this has left many researchers feeling restricted. “The main problem is that most of the universities in Turkey are still autocratic. In the West, researchers are more independent. In Turkey, however, department heads expect researchers to work on subjects that they find appropriate,” she said, adding, “This fact is especially disturbing for the young people who have been educated in European and US universities.”

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What are the experiences of Turkish people here? Are universities autocratic?