Police have detained 167 students at the campuses of Sütçü İmam University in Kahramanmaraş province and Çukurova University in Adana province after clashes erupted between groups of students.
Police also fired tear gas to disperse students clashing at Ankara’s Gazi University.
The clashes at Sütçü İmam University started on Wednesday and continued on Thursday. The dispute was reportedly spurred when a group of students assaulted Yüksel Tekin, a student from the department of economics. Police dispersed the crowd that had formed on Wednesday using tear gas and water cannon.
However, two groups started to fight at the entrance of the department of economics on Thursday, breaking some windows of the building and damaging campus property.
The police examined surveillance camera footage to identify those involved and consequently detained 67 students. The students were taken for procedural medical check-ups before being interrogated by the police. Security measures have been stepped up at the university.
In a separate incident, groups of students fought with each other at Gazi University in Ankara. Riot police fired tear gas to disperse the students.
In Adana, around 400 students at Çukurova University marched to the campus to commemorate the anniversary of the Uludere airstrike that killed 38 people in the Southeast. Another group of students attacked the marchers with bats and stones. Leftist students raided the university library and took some fellow students hostage. Riot police used tear gas against the students before detaining 100 of them. Adana Deputy Police Chief Fahri Aktaş was injured during the incident when a stone struck him in the back of his head, needing medical attention.
At Bingöl University in the southeastern province of Bingöl, police intervened in a demonstration also held to mark the anniversary of the Uludere tragedy. The Bingöl branch of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) delivered a statement to protest police detentions of students in a clash last week, which included its members. After the statement, the group confronted the police trying to disperse them and responded by throwing stones at the officers, who fired tear gas. Some people affected by the tear gas were taken to a hospital.
Thirty-eight people were mistakenly killed near Uludere in Şırnak province by Turkish military jets on Dec. 28, 2011. The victims were traveling back to their villages in Uludere from cities in northern Iraq when Turkish jets bombed the group, with the military later saying that commanders mistook them for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.