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Police officers and students clash during protests in Istanbul: For about a month there have been protests against the rector of the Bosphorus University appointed by Erdoğan
Photo: Omer Kuscu / AP
"Look down," a plainclothed policeman calls out to a young man who has joined peaceful student protests in Istanbul.
He calls twice as he approaches the student.
Then he gets violent, it comes to a fight with several police officers.
The scene was filmed and released on February 1st.
The clip has now been viewed more than five million times on Twitter alone.
This resulted in a slogan for the resistance of the students in Istanbul: "Aşağı bakmayacağız" - "We will not look down".
Numerous entries are now being collected in social networks under the slogan, and chants can be heard at rallies.
The background to the ongoing protests is a personnel decision by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
On January 1st, the Turkish president made his party friend Melih Bulu rector of the prestigious Bosporus University.
Faculty members and students see this as an encroachment on institutional independence; they fear that the government will exert more influence on the university in the future.
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