Turkish students protest faculty being fired over porno thesis

NEW DELHI - Around 600 Turkish students have protested in front of Bilgi University in Istanbul after the decision was taken to fire three of its faculty for allowing a student to film a porno as his graduation thesis.

The students demanded the return of the founder of the visual design department and the two lecturers, and protested against the university’s administration.

They gathered at the university’s Santral Campus in Istanbul’s Eyup district, and shouted slogans like “academic freedom”, “this is a marketplace, not a university” and “freedom at Bilgi”, English.news.cn reported.

The film’s director had graduated from Bilgi University’s Photography and Video Department last year, and the nature of his thesis project, which was revealed last week, caused nation-wide controversy.

Upon not hearing any direct objections from the faculty, he went ahead and shot the film at a studio on campus with a fellow student as the star, in an attempt to “test the limits of academic freedom”.

The protestors read a press release calling for an end to censorship, pointing out that the film is not pornography since it was not created for sale and by firing the three faculties the university had prevented discourse on this topic. They called for the administration to quit.

“We’d settle for the administration running the university like a corporation, but they are running it like a market,” the head of Bilgi University’s Mathematics Department, who supported the students, stated. (ANI)