Formation of the "Wise Persons Committee" in 2013 was heralded as one of the turning points in Turkey's democratization process. Composed of 63 people, who are framed as the 'top intelligentsia' of Turkey, the Wise People conducted meetings all over the country to establish a dialogue channels with the public in general; the 'ordinary folk'-with regards to peaceful resolution of the Kurdish Question. At this instance, the figure of the 'enlightened' (the word used for 'intellectual' in Turkish, 'aydın') was utilized as a 'positive','uniting' figure by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and AKP's leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Barely three years later, the same political cadres of the AKP, condemned the 'intellectual' (aydın) for signing a petition demanding the very same thing; peaceful resolution of the Kurdish Question. This time around, the 1128 signatories of the petition, belonging to Turkey's academic circles were framed as 'supporters of terrorism' by the AKP and now-Head of Republic Erdoğan. Some of these academics lost their jobs, had their passports confiscated, had traveling abroad ban imposed, became targets of legal and administrative investigations. Ironically, some of the signatories were the very same people who took part in the Wise Persons Committee or have supported this committee’s work. This article evaluates how the political representation figure of 'aydın' has transformed in these two instances by analyzing the politicians' speeches, news stories and political analyses that appeared in the media, as well as the interviews, articles and statements of the intellectuals involved through the method of discourse analysis. We also discuss the role of 'aydın' in Turkey's contemporary political history, the dependence and independence of the intellectual vis-a-vis political power and question why and how politicians aim to instrumentalize the 'aydın' in normative (in ‘positive’ and ‘negative’) terms to vanguard their political agenda. Overall, the article assesses Bourdieu’s theorization on symbolic power of the intellectual and intellectual as an “autonomous and collective individual” with regards to these two cases in Turkey: how is the intellectual’s autonomy shaped when viewed from a comparative angle in seemingly contrasting cases and how does political power relate to the display of autonomy/lack of it of the collective intellectual.