Experts blame economic woe for student protests in Turkey: familiar story

[Hannah Bell]

The angry government response to recent student protests has been intolerant, various experts have said, also citing economic factors as major reasons behind the demonstrations.

“We have to first understand the students’ living conditions to judge their actions. They live in economically hard conditions and they don’t see a bright future for themselves due to the unemployment problem,” Alpaslan Işıklı, the president of the Association of Academic Staff, or TÜMÖD, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

“University fees are too high and think they are being made into customers of universities and that universities are commercialized,” Işıklı said. “Maybe they can’t express this clearly, but these are the reasons behind their protests.”

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=politicians-should-be-tolerant-to-protests-say-experts-2010-12-09