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*Lisan Alayoğlu
The CITÖK guideline, which was formed with the students at IU, was changed without including the students.
Last summer, in June, the Istanbul University (IU) Senate changed the guidelines of The Commission for Sexual Harassment and Violence Prevention (CİTÖK), which was established due to the students’ struggle. Stating that they were unaware of this change, the students said they did not accept the senate’s intervention. They showed their protest by sharing on their social media accounts. We talked to Idil, a member of the IU Women’s Studies Commission, who is involved in the entire process of forming CITÖK, about this move by the school administration regarding the guideline and its effects on the upcoming process.
Would you briefly talk about the establishment of CITÖK at Istanbul University?
The process began when students heard the news of a lecturer from the Faculty of Political Sciences harassing a colleague at Kocaeli University in 2022 at Istanbul University. As the IU Women’s Studies Commission, we decided to bring the struggle we have been continuing for the establishment of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Board to the attention of the student clubs. The clubs quickly adopted this demand. Afterwards, many constituents of the school supported our struggle. As a result of our persistent struggle that lasted almost a year, our CITÖK guideline was issued in June 2022. The establishment of the commission was extended until December of the following semester. This struggle became one of the issues that brought students together the most at our university after many years.
How was writing the first guideline carried out, and at which level did students participate?
We were trying to continue all processes regarding CITÖK with the broadest participation possible and with the inclusion of every constituent. The writing process of the guideline was the same. We quickly rolled up our sleeves and had a meeting where our friends from the law faculty were the majority. In this meeting, we shared the CITÖK guidelines from other universities and prepared summary files highlighting each university’s strengths. We looked for ways to write the purpose and scope of the guideline without alienating any constituent. Our main goal was to prevent the guideline from becoming a pressure tool because we had received feedback from our friends from other universities that the university administration was using those against the students. We came together in the meetings and prepared a sample guideline. We carefully wrote this document’s essential details regarding purpose, scope, and principles. We presented the file we prepared to the deans and our faculty clubs and tried to include all constituents in the process.
The university administration tasked the Women’s Research and Application Center (KAUM) with writing the guideline. The centre included our professors from different faculties in writing the document. We presented the file we prepared to the centre and our professors. I think the first guideline was successful in many ways, and the main reason behind it was the students’ united struggle. Throughout the year, the clubs continued meeting on this issue every two weeks and learned to act together.
Despite all these, the university administration changed the guideline last June. What exactly was changed?
Since the commission was founded, the school administration has not taken adequate steps to announce it, and as a club, we are sharing posts on CITÖK to fill this gap. Before the term started, we wanted to look at the CITÖK guideline for such a post idea. After the commission was formed in December, a website was opened for this board. The website includes a list of board members, a guideline and an application form. When we visited this site to look at the guidelines, we saw that the members, its name, and the commission guidelines had been changed. Without informing anyone, they had ignored the united struggle that the students had been carrying out for years with a senate decision. They had changed the guidelines overnight, which were created by students, without them.
If we look at the articles one by one, we can start with the name of the guideline:
- The first version was “Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Prevention Guideline”, but the word “discrimination” was removed and changed to “Sexual Violence and Harassment Combat Guideline.”
- The first document’s purpose and scope were written as two articles with a comprehensive framework. For example, it included everyone on the university campus or in places allocated by the university for any reason. Still, in the second guideline, the scope of the article was narrowed to just “students and staff”.
- Again, the definitions of the articles, as mentioned earlier, have been shortened, and the phrase “threat based on gender” in the scope article has been removed.
- One of the crucial changes is the removal of the definitions in the document. The definitions of situations such as sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and retaliation are vital for the guidelines because people can sometimes have difficulty understanding whether the incident they experience is a sexual assault. For this reason, expanded definitions can encourage victims to apply to the board. The removal of definitions that were put in place with these exact concerns is aimed at damaging the effect of the guideline.
- Again, one of the most important articles, “No application can be left without a result; it must be reported,” has been completely removed. With this article removed, the commission is no longer bound to return to applications. These are the changes that are noticeable at first glance. The two guidelines differ by about two pages, so it is possible to say that the entire document has changed.
What do you think about the changes in the guidelines? Why do you think the university administration felt the need for such a change?
The university does not effectively operate the commission. Many of our female friends who contacted our club stated that their applications were not responded to. We know that no further process was carried out after a few questions were asked of our friends who were contacted. However, CITÖK is also an institution that should provide medical and psychological support. There are no steps regarding these issues. We can say that the school is crushed under the weight of applications because they did not take effective steps to establish the mechanism that will perform the interventions specified in the guideline. For example, none of the members of the commission are academics who have particular expertise in the field of sexual harassment and violence. In our opinion, being the coordinator of this commission should not be an additional job but a full-time job. There is a need for an officer who only deals with this commission’s work. When we consider all these, the first reason the school changed the guideline is that it saw the necessary processes of the applications as a burden. The other main reason is that the first document could not be adapted to the university model the government wanted to design. The changes made have political grounds when considered together with the interventions made by the government in universities in recent years.
It is also necessary to accept that CITÖK, one of the institutionalised fields of the women’s movement, cannot be considered separately from the movement from which it derives its essence. For this reason, if we insist on our demand for an “effective CITÖK, a safe campus” in our ongoing struggle, there will be no obstacle to establishing this mechanism.
