Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) administration announced that they were suspending all ongoing Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with educational institutions in Turkey on Thursday, May 15. A visiting professor hired to teach a diploma course at the university has gone back to Turkey as a result, MANUU’s Registrar Ishtiaque Ahmed said.
The MANUU administration issued the statement with the hashtag #NationFirst, indicating that the move was a reaction to Turkey’s support for Pakistan during the recent military stand-off with India.
MANUU is the third public university after the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi to have suspended ties with Turkish educational institutions. JNU had announced the suspension of its MoU with Inonu University in Turkey, saying the university “stands with the nation.”
A few months ago, in January 2024, MANUU had signed an MoU with Yunus Emre Institute, a non-profit organisation created by the Turkish government, aimed at promoting Turkish language and culture.
Under the MoU, MANUU’s School of Languages, Linguistics and Indology would provide a diploma course in Turkish for a period of five years. “The visiting professor hired for this purpose has gone back to Turkey with the suspension of the MoU,” MANUU’s Registrar said.
The suspension of such MoUs by MANUU and other universities comes at a time when Indians are boycotting Turkish goods and services, after the West Asian country vocally supported Pakistan following Operation Sindoor. Amid reports of the use of Turkish-origin drones by Pakistan to breach Indian airspace, the boycott intensified.
Operation Sindoor was a military offensive carried out by the Indian armed forces on May 7 that targeted nine terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The military operation was carried out in response to the Pahalgam terrorist attack in which 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen were killed in April.