Relentless prosecutions of Academics for Peace gather pace

The prosecution of academics in Turkey for signing a petition calling for peace talks with Kurdish militants is continuing at an increasing and relentless pace. Headlines of reports of trials of academics in Turkey on Bianet.org – a ‘journalism for rights’ site funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency which has closely tracked the trials – tells its own story.

For the month to 1 May, they read:

• • 2 April: Academic sentenced to 15 months in prison
  
  
• • 3 April: One more academic given deferred prison sentence of one year, three months
  
  
• • 5 April: Five more academics sentenced to one year, three months in prison
  
  
• • 9 April: Court asks permission for investigation upon Article 301
  
  
• • 10 April: Five academics sentenced to seven years, nine months in prison in total
  
  
• • 11 April: Two academics sentenced to one year, three months; one academic to one year, 10 months in prison
  
  
• • 17 April: Prison sentence of academic increases by seven months between two hearings
  
  
• • 1 May: One academic sentenced to 15 months; one academic to 30 months in prison.

The petition was critical of Turkish military operations against Kurdish militants in civilian areas and called for the opening of a “peace dialogue”.

More than 200 hearings of academics who signed the petition in January 2016 are scheduled over the next three months, including 88 in May, as the trials of academics gather pace.

Typically they are charged with “propagandising for a terrorist organisation” under Article 7/2 of the Anti-Terror Law (TMK), or of "degrading the state of the Republic of Turkey" under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).

On 12 March 2019, 1,800 academics from across the world – including five Nobel Prize winners and Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler – signed an open letter voicing “solidarity with the academics and students who are targeted by the regime in Turkey for exercising their freedom of speech and academic freedom”.

“We call upon the Turkish government to immediately suspend the trials of all signatories to the Academics for Peace statement ‘We will not be a party to this crime’,” the letter said, referring to the petition.

But there has been no pause in the trials.

Up to 29 March 2019, 563 academics had stood trial since 5 December 2017 and all of the 169 academics whose cases had been concluded had been sentenced to prison, Bianet reported.

As of 1 May 2019, 185 prison sentences had been handed down, 149 of them suspended, four of them deferred and 32 convicted. Among those convicted one has been given three years, and 25 have been given between two and three years.

On one day alone, 21 February 2019, 28 academics were sentenced to a total of 59 years and two months in prison, with 15 of them given two years and three months, again for “propagandising for a terrorist organisation”, because they did not show remorse, Bianet reported.

Twelve of them were sentenced to one year but the announcement of the verdict for those with less than two years was deferred.

One of the 15 given two years and three months, Dr Özgür Müftüoglu, a lecturer, said in signing the petition he had “legally demanded the right to peace which is a universal right” and did not accept that a crime had been committed.

“Defending the right to peace is not a crime. We did not commit a crime. We want justice,” Müftüoglu said.

Among the academics on trial, who were all given the chance to say some last words, all argued that they were demanding peace, Bianet reported.

Lecturer Ahmet Bekmen said: “Many friends of ours lost their jobs in this period. They didn’t kneel down; I am proud of them all.”

Öznur Yasar Diner, a lecturer, said: “I want peace and justice for everyone and want to live this.”

Cihan Yapistiran, a postgraduate student, said: “My last word is peace.”

International solidarity

The letter voicing international solidarity with the charged academics was triggered by the decision against Professor Zübeyde Füsun Üstel, who on 1 March 2019 became the first Academic for Peace whose 15-month prison sentence was upheld by the court of appeal.

An academic at Galatasaray University, who focuses mainly on the history of Turkey, nationalism and issues of identity, she had been charged on 4 April 2018 with “propagandising for a terrorist organisation” under Article No 7/2 of Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law No 3713, because she had signed the Academics for Peace petition. But instead of accepting the decision and having her sentence suspended, she appealed.

In Turkey a suspended sentence means the verdict or sentence is removed if the person does not commit an intentional crime within five years.

The letter strongly condemned this decision and called upon the Turkish government to immediately suspend the trials of all signatories to the Academics for Peace statement ‘We will not be a party to this crime’. They also demanded exoneration for Professor Füsun Üstel and the other academics – 140 at the time – who had been sentenced to prison for petitioning their government.

Of these decisions, 37 were appealed and Füsun Üstel’s was the first to be decided, thus serving as a “dangerous precedent”. Some 124 other signatories were awaiting their first hearings.

“We express our solidarity with the academics and students who are targeted by the regime in Turkey for exercising their freedom of speech and academic freedom and we call upon academics around the world to use all available means to support them, including freezing academic collaborations with complicit higher education institutions and universities that deliberately target academic freedom,” they said.

The intended recipients of the letter included the permanent representative of Turkey to the United Nations and Turkish consulate general in New York, as well as Turkey's minister of justice, Council of Higher Education president, minister of national education, the prime minister and the president.

Institutions and rights organisations endorsing the letter included the Research Institute on Turkey; Academic Solidarity Network; Forum Transregionale Studien; Article 19; Global Freedom of Expression, Columbia University; Academics for Peace – North America; Academics for Peace – United Kingdom; California Scholars for Academic Freedom; PEN International; National Writers Union – UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO; English PEN; PEN America; Dansk PEN and SUP-DDHT (Solidarité avec les Universitaires pour la Paix et Défense de Droits Humaines en Turquie).

The letter provided links to sources of information about the hearings and “complicit institutions”, hearing data on the trials of Academics for Peace, and information about the trials.

Under the terms of Article 301, anyone who publicly degrades the Turkish Nation, State of the Republic of Turkey, Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Government of the Republic of Turkey and the judicial bodies of the State shall be sentenced to a penalty of imprisonment for a term of six months to two years. A person who publicly degrades the military or security organisations can also be sentenced.

But the code does state that “the expression of an opinion for the purpose of criticism does not constitute an offence”.

The prosecution of academics is one aspect of a broader purge of academics, mostly those who have been critical of government policy regarding the Kurdish problem or who are deemed to be linked to the movement of Fethullah Gülen, an exiled moderate Islamist leader, who was once a political ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan but has since been accused by the government of being behind the coup attempt of 15 July 2016, during which 255 people lost their lives.

The purge has involved around 1,700 detentions or warrants issued to academics involved in the Academics for Peace petition, the physical detention of more than 1,250 of them, and the dismissal of 8,500 academic personnel and 1,350 administrative staff.

Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk, has previously raised “grave concerns about the objectivity and fairness” of the investigations and proceedings against academics, which, he said, “strongly suggest retaliation for the non-violent exercise of academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association.”