This study examines Ibn Khaldun University (IHU) to understand whether the civilizational ideology of AKP (Justice and Development Party) is being manifested as a decolonial academic paradigm at IHU. Higher education has been experiencing a worldwide transformation due to the advancement of globalism, neoliberalism, and technology. This transformation of the definition and function of higher education is not only quantitative, i.e., the increasing number of universities, students, and areas of study, but also qualitative such as the replacement of the academic administration offices by professional administrations, the increasing role of bureaucracy on academic decisions and such. One of the qualitative aspects which requires urgent attention yet does not get is the relationship between the state and higher education. Like others, studies on higher education in Turkey tend to address the problems of higher education in a vacuum without analyzing the prevailing state ideology, how it transforms higher education, and at the same time, is being reinforced or challenged by it. This incuriosity is not due to the insignificance of the phenomenon. Rather, the link between the state and higher education is mainly taken for granted as the prevailing ideology is undoubtedly effective in higher education and followingly justified and reproduced institutionally. On the other hand, this study questions this assumption and analyzes the link between AKP’s civilizationism and IHU, and examines whether civilizationism is being institutionalized and reproduced in IHU. This study follows a three-level analysis. First, I examine the civilizationism of the ruling party AKP and the founding principles of IHU, which are “Open Civilization” and “Open Science,” theorized by its founder and first president Recep Şentürk and discuss how these discourses overlap and reinforce each other. Second, I analyze the decolonial character of civilizationism based on the concepts of “Open Civilization” and “Open Science” and argue and discuss the hegemonic nature of this decolonial discourse. Finally, based on the analyses of the curricula, syllabi, interviews with the academic staff, and participant observation at the IHU campus, I discuss whether IHU, as the blueprint of the civilizational political paradigm, is actually reproducing and justifying it as a decolonial academic paradigm and how.