Deputies from Turkey’s ruling party have voted down a proposal to name a new university in İzmir after Zübeyde Hanım, mother of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
During a debate Tuesday evening in Parliament, the name “Zübeyde Hanım” was proposed for one of the eight new universities around the country to be established under a recent draft law.
Parliament convened to debate the new draft and decided that the university would be named “Katip Çelebi” instead.
During the debate Tuesday before the draft passed, Bülent Baratalı and seven deputies of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, proposed a resolution for the naming of the new university in İzmir “Zübeyde Hanım University.”
Education Minister Nimet Çubukçu, however, expressed her disagreement with the CHP proposal.
CHP deputy Baratalı pointed out that İzmir currently has seven universities and the new university in question was initially named “Turgut Reis,” but this name was later changed to “Katip Çelebi” by Parliament’s Planning and Budgeting Commission.
“For the first time, a university in Turkey would have been named after a woman. At the time the founder of the nation, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was installed as president, he bore the title of parliamentary deputy – from İzmir,” Baratalı said. “His wife was from İzmir and he laid his mother to rest in İzmir – her grave is in [the local district of] Karşıyaka. For that reason, we, the people of İzmir, owe this homage to the founder of our nation.”
The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, members, however, rejected the resolution proposed by the CHP deputy, and the new university will be named after Çelebi, an Ottoman scientist who lived between 1608 and 1656.
The other universities established under the new law are Yıldırım Beyazıt University in Ankara, Bursa Technical University, Istanbul Medeniyet University, Konya University, Erzurum Technical University, Kayseri Abdullah Gül University and the International University of Antalya.