Boğaziçi University, 2012. Wikicommons/ Turkmessage. Some rights reserved.From June 6 to Augus 4, 2016, I was a visiting assistant professor at the Political Science Department of Bogazici (Bosphorus in Turkish) University, the first American higher education institution founded abroad.
This account is of my personal experience of the traumatic events that happened last year in the midst of the summer semester on July 15. I want to explain the immediate emotions of discouragement, fear, and stress that I and my students experienced on campus after the incident and how we coped with the trauma.
About one year ago, I awoke from sleep on the fifth floor of the Ucaksavar dormitory at Bogazici University, that accommodates hundreds of students and faculty members. I had fallen asleep that evening whilst waiting for my friend, who was stuck in traffic on the Bosphorus Bridge connecting the European and Asian sides of the city of Istanbul. From 10 pm onwards, Turkish soldiers had blocked the bridge, closing it to traffic, an action by a “military group” which was later denounced by Turkey’s prime minister Binali Yildirim as illegal.
