News flash: Closure of the Istanbul Center for Mathematical Sciences (IMBM)
The Erdoğan regime takes aim at mathematics in Turkey
Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, also known as Bosphorus University, was, to quote a Turkish colleague, “the last stronghold of academic freedom in Turkey and thus a preferred target for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's autocratic regime.” On January 1, 2021, Erdoğan appointed a new rector. After the faculty rejected his choice by a 94% no confidence vote, Erdoğan named a second rector, Naci İnci, who promptly applied to the campus the methods that Erdoğan has developed nationally over the past two decades.
Faculty members responded with a call for international solidarity and the international community responded by signing a “Declaration of Support to Boğaziçi University Resistance.”
Mathematics has not been spared. On January 27 of this year, the Société Mathématique de France wrote to the rector to express their “profound indignation” at the dismissal of mathematician Mohan Ravichandran, overruling the Turkish Council of Higher Education and ignoring the protests of his colleagues.1 The most recent and extreme measure against mathematics was taken just over one week ago, with the sudden decision to close IMBM, the Istanbul Center for Mathematical Sciences. The IMBM website provides the details:
The Istanbul Center for Mathematical Sciences, IMBM, founded in 2006 in the south campus of Boğaziçi University (BU) with the collaboration of several mathematics departments of the city, thanks to the conditional donation of one of the oldest and largest construction companies in Turkey, has been suddenly asked to evacuate its location by the recently appointed rector of the university. As of the morning of May 24, 2022, by changing the keys, the rectorate prevented our access and our activities, hence the IMBM has been confiscated.
IMBM is the only research institute in Turkey, even in the region, covering all areas of mathematical sciences. This evacuation which would mean the disappearance of the Center, will have a serious negative effect on the mathematical community, starting with the Department of Mathematics of Boğaziçi.
The aim of IMBM has been to host mathematical activities held by mathematicians from all over Turkey and their foreign visitors. For 16 years, seminars, regular meetings on special topics, international workshops, conferences, series of lectures on special topics, summer/winter schools for PhD and higher levels were organized during which more than thousand of talks were given. IMBM has provided an easy to reach environment for local/national/international researchers to come together and discuss mathematics in a modest but peaceful location.
Since 2006 IMBM has been visited by mathematicians form the whole world, including David Mumford, Pierre-Louis Lions, Vladimir Voevodsky, Robert Langlands. With more than twenty centers and institutes, it has been part of the “Mathematics European Infrastructure” Project. It has been host for four years to the TÜBİTAK (Turkish Research Council) doctoral network including 60 researchers and PhD students from 15 universities, and also to meetings of mathematical societies such as the Turkish Mathematical Society (TMD), the European Math Society (EMS). IMBM has also contributed by scientifically advising the set-up and installation of the international mathematics exhibition IMAGINARY.
IMBM is co-directed by a BU Mathematics professor and a colleague from another university, for extendible periods of 2 years, and together they lead a Management Committee constituted of several mathematicians, physicists and engineers from five different institutions. IMBM is supervised by a Scientific Advisory Committee constituted of several eminent mathematicians with internationally acknowledged scientific work.
IMBM is now asking mathematical institutes around the world to support their Turkish counterpart and “Declare a seminar at your institution as an IMBM seminar.” I expect more details to be published in coming days on Twitter @imbm_icms.
See also the SMF statement dated April 6, when they also signed the international Declaration of Support.