18 Jul 18 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Naif Bezwan cannot pinpoint a certain moment in his life in which he decided to pursue academia. For Bezwan, rather, it has been a gradual process of situating his personal narrative within the context of his Kurdish community, within Turkey and within the world.
Bezwan, currently Honorary Senior fellow at UCL Department of Political Science, was born in Diyarbakir, one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey. A focal point of conflicts between the Turkish government and insurgent groups, the city has a strong tradition of Kurdish liberation movement. Growing up, Bezwan heard the stories of previous generations, including those of his grandparents and relatives, about how they were repressed by the Turkish state. The trajectory of his academic interests was further shaped by his commitment to the universal human struggle for freedom and equality, as well as his determination for democratic reforms through rigorous inquiry. Several areas of his research and teaching expertise include Turkey’s policy towards Kurds and the Kurdish quest for self-rule.
It is not difficult to understand Bezwan’s motivation behind signing the Academics for Peace petition in January 2016. 1,128 academics from 89 universities in Turkey signed the petition, calling on the Turkish government to end its military operations in the Kurdish region and establish negotiations. This peaceful dissent emphatically rejected violence and yet, the signatories were detained and put under investigation. If found guilty of alleged terrorism charges, the petitioners could face between one and five years in prison.
After signing the petition with 37 colleagues from Mardin Artuklu University, Bezwan faced a disciplinary investigation in February 2016. A second investigation was launched just a few months later, in August 2016, after comments he made about the Turkish military incursion in Cerablus, Syria. This time, however, the consequences were even more severe, unjust and absurd.
The interview with the Turkish daily Evrensel was related to the core areas of his academic interests and expertise. Bezwan stressed the danger of using military forces at home and abroad in dealing with Kurdish rights and demands. He was immediately suspended from his position at Mardin Artuklu University, where he was teaching at the time, and completely dismissed through an emergency decree issued in September 2016.
Being deprived of teaching, conducting research or holding any public position, with the possible consequences of signing the Academics for Peace petition hanging over his head, Bezwan felt he had no choice but to leave his life in Turkey for London in November 2016. After almost a year of living in exile, Bezwan became a CARA (the Council for At-Risk Academics) fellow at UCL from June 2017 to June 2018.
Bezwan spoke with Long Dang of Index on Censorship about the events that transpired, his life in the UK, and his vision for Turkey’s future.
Index: What motivated you to become an academic?
Naif Bezwan: I could not really remember a certain point in my biographical trajectories in which I decided to become an academic, let alone pursuing an academic career. The idea of pursuing a career in academia has not been considered something worthwhile and esteemed by my generation of Kurdish and Turkish leftist intellectuals growing up under the brutal military rule in the 1980s. Quite the contrary, embarking on individualistic remedies was seen as a kind of opportunistic behaviour to save your skin, as it were, at the expense of a cause greater than yourself. So I think it has really been a process of gradual becoming rather than a decision at a certain point in time to be an academic. Having said that, it has nonetheless been a clear and conscious orientation towards, and commitment to, certain values, such as democracy, social change, justice, equality and self-determination that motivated us greatly. This motivation, I remember vividly, went hand in hand with an insatiable curiosity about the human condition, history, philosophy, as well as about the situation and destiny of your own society. All this was coupled with a pronounced sense of agency and responsibility for transforming what we perceive to contradict human dignity and freedom. Ultimately, it has been this intensive search for understanding of what has been in the past, as well as for what human dignity and flourishing requires, that led me to become an “academic”, or more precisely, an expelled one.
Index: Why did you become interested in working on Turkey’s Kurdish conflict ?
Naif Bezwan: First, as I indicated, it has been due to the life-world in which my political, cultural and intellectual socialisation, dispositions and positions were coming into being and shaped. I was born in a region of Kurdistan in Turkey, in Diyarbakir, where the Kurdish liberation movement has traditionally been very strong, where an awareness of being member of a distinct society is widespread, where interest in politics, culture and world affairs was distinctively strong. Second, I was raised in a family in which memories of brutal repressions of previous Kurdish generations by the Turkish state, including members of my family, namely my grandfathers and their relatives, were kept alive – their engagements were upheld and their sufferings were told, retold and remembered. A third factor that seems to have formed my orientation during my youth was a growing influence of socialist ideas adopted and defended by various Kurdish organisations and movements throughout 1970s and later on. So all these factors have provided a background to my epistemological interest in working on Turkey and Kurdistan. My time and higher education in Germany during my first emigration, and now in London, have bestowed me with the kind of resources needed to study this problem in-depth from a comparative and historical perspective, and with a degree of freedom necessary to inquiry this complex subject-matter.
To study the various aspects of the Kurdish society and conflicts as a Kurdish scholar almost per se makes you suspicious in the eyes of Turkish state authorities and can lead to your expulsion and imprisonment, as has been the case for many scholars over the years. But it can unfortunately also have consequences of a different kind even in Western countries, such as being branded as biased because of your Kurdish identity or being asked not to criticise the repressive policies leading up to your expulsion and emigration.
Index: On January 2016, 1128 academics signed a petition, entitled “We will not be a party to this crime”, demanding the Turkish government to end military oppression against the Kurdish population. What were your reasons for signing the petition? Were they professional or personal?
Naif Bezwan: It was a combination of both. There was a brutal ongoing war against the Kurdish population, a war whose effects we felt in our daily lives and the lives of our students. I was working at Mardin Artuklu University, which is located at the heart of the Kurdish region at the border between Turkey and Syria. I excruciatingly remember how young people and soldiers were killed everyday, lives and livelihoods destroyed as a result of the termination of the peace process by the government in the summer of 2015. I could not simply stand by and see all these atrocities while the whole community was being destroyed – my students and the people I knew were very affected by this policy of destruction. That is why I signed the petition, knowing that possible severe consequences would be arising from it.
Index: The petition called for a peaceful settlement between the government and the Kurdish population, and yet the government termed it “terrorism”. You were first suspended from your position because of a critical interview on the Turkish military incursion into Syria in August 2016. How do these incidents speak to the government’s system of oppression?
Naif Bezwan: I was suspended from my position for giving the interview with the Turkish Daily National. As an academic for International Relations and Political Science with a specific focus on Turkish domestic politics, political system, foreign policy and Kurdish issue, I argued that the Kurdish issue was essentially entrenched within Turkey, which meant that security would not be possible through more invasion or use of military violence internally and externally. The way to solve the problem, I stressed, was to return to the peace process which had been broken by the government. Only a couple of hours following the interview’s publication, I was called by the faculty administration to be handed down an official document. Upon my arrival, I was given a letter. This letter, in which a reference was made to the interview, was nothing but an order for my suspension that had been signed by the rector of the University. So I was immediately suspended from my position and then requested to give my defence as to why I gave the interview. In my defence, I emphasised that the interview was related to the core area of my expertise, and that suspension of academics and suppression of free speech cannot be the way in which academics arguments should be exchanged and universities function. My assessment, I added, might have been wrong or problematic. If so, however, it should have been responded through counterarguments instead of punitive measures. I have not yet been notified of the outcome of the administrative inquiry, but instead have been completely expelled from my position and public service through a decree-law in September 2016.
Index: Could you describe the hostile environment in Turkey after the failed coup attempt of July 2016?
Naif Bezwan: The coup attempt was a vicious attempt against democracy, but the government used it as the pretext to extend the dimension and size of oppression. In the aftermath of the failed coup, Erdogan said something very treacherously revealing – he depicted the coup as a kind of blessing. Why was it so? Well, this “blessing” was used first to intimidate the whole range of oppression, and second to consolidate his power. It was clear that it would be difficult to live in the country and therefore my partner and I decided to leave the country for the UK on 9th November 2016.
Index: How has life in the UK been for you?
Naif Bezwan: I think every form of forced exile contrary to freely chosen ways of immigration in search for a better life is painful. You are all of a sudden cut off from many things that make your life meaningful – your work, your relationships, your friends and family. After having migrated from Turkey to Germany in 1991, I freely decided to return to Turkey in January 2014, in the hope of doing something meaningful. I had just settled down and once again I was compelled to leave the country. The choice I had to make was between going into a new exile or being deprived of many things and activities that defined me and my way of life.
Being confronted with a forced immigration, one also needs to look on the bright side, try to create new possibilities and involve oneself in activities that would give meaning to one’s life again. In June 2017, almost a year after my arrival in London, I was granted the CARA fellowship at the Department of Political Science at UCL. Thanks to the fellowship, I was able to more systematically and continuously work and promote my studies and public engagement. I have completed two academic articles during the first months of my fellowship. I have been able to do a lot of research and participate in many academic conferences. In a group of other academics and friends, I became involved in establishing a London-based charity, the Centre for Democracy and Peace Research, which provides substantial support for our friends and colleagues back home. In all, being in the UK has been an uplifting opportunity, allowing me to continue with my studies and with my life.
Index: What is your perspective on the newly-expanded powers of Erdogan and their implications for the freedom of academics? What sort of support do you think is necessary for freedom movements to gain momentum? Could momentum be gained from within the country, or is some form of international intervention fundamental?
Naif Bezwan: As far as the character of the new regime is concerned, I think we have to keep in mind that the constitutional changes that introduced the new government system was made under a state of emergency. Opposition was silenced and intimidated, and there was no free press or free speech. This is very indicative of the character of the current regime. It is essentially an authoritarian, autocratic regime based on arbitrariness, with severe restrictions on free speech and a range of repressive policies at its disposal. For example, just three days before Erdogan was sworn in as president, there was an emergency decree through which about 18,000 civil servants, including academics, were dismissed. The message that the government wants to send is: we celebrate our victory through the intimidation and suppression of people, depriving them of basic rights, of the basis for life in dignity and freedom.
Given the nature of the current regime, two major outcomes seem to be possible. First, if there is a convergence between the parliament majority and president, which is currently the case, it would allow the president to exercise a constitutional dictatorship, in which the president can act in absolutely unbounded manners, since the dictatorial exercise of state authority is grounded in the very nature of the constitution itself. The current regime is authoritarian and autocratic in character, based on and emerged out of, extensive policies of intimidation, expulsion, fear and war-mongering. The other option would be a divergence between the parliament majority and president, which would result in an illiberal, dysfunctional regime. So: we had a choice between two equally undemocratic, unreasonable and repressive ways of governing the country. What makes things even worse is the fact that the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – the far-right, anti-kurdish, anti-western, utterly racist party – now provides the president and his new regime with the necessary majority.
Given the fact that the country is increasingly becoming a big prison for the Kurds, minority groups, academics and critical voices, the work of the Kurdish and Turkish diaspora, as well as the support of the international community, is essential to strengthening democratic opposition and forces of transformation in the country. Due to the monopolization of the press in Turkey by the government, critics have no free space for acting and organizing themselves. This is why it is so important for organizations like Index to give voice to the people, their suffering and their resistance, in Turkey and beyond.
Index: Do you have hope that you will be able to return to Turkey, and pick up from where you left off?
Naif Bezwan: Going through all this process and being affected by it make you perhaps particularly sensible to the injustices directed at other people. I feel it incumbent upon me to do more academic work and be even more involved in civic duties to change the current situation and the utterly repressive regime. It is not an easy task at all. It requires patience and perseverance on the one hand, and creativity, solidarity and imagination on the other to generate new alternatives. I feel a responsibility to contribute the realising democratic and peaceful conditions in Kurdistan, Turkey and beyond.
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06 Jul 18 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Sahika Erkonan never thought signing a petition meant signing away her life, her family or her country. Marooned in London, she now faces an uncertain future.
Erkonan was one of over 2,000 Turks that signed a January 2016 petition by Academics for Peace, an organisation formed in 2012 that advocates for peace between Kurds and Turks. The signatories called on the Turkish government to end its war with Turkey’s Kurdish population in the southeast of the country.
Erkonan was a research assistant studying for her PhD at the University of Ankara when she joined other students and university professors in criticising the Turkish government’s ongoing conflict with the Kurds.
With signatures from over 90 universities, the petition had wide-reaching implications. Deemed “so-called intellectuals” by president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 330 academics were dismissed from their universities on 7 February 2017 for alleged involvement in the July 2016 coup. Hundreds of academics were held on criminal charges as the government cracked down on “organisations or groups that are determined to carry out activities against [the] state’s national security”.
Immediately after signing the petition, Erkonan was placed under investigation by the University of Ankara. As part of her research assistant contract, she was due to work at another university in the country. However, after being put under investigation, Erkonan decided it was best to continue her thesis abroad, resigning from the University of Ankara. The university accepted her resignation and she was able to use her passport to leave the country, unlike many others, although four months later she was dismissed by decree.
Now studying and living in the UK, Erkonan spoke with Danyaal Yasin of Index on Censorship about her experience.
Index: After you and hundreds of other academics and students were exiled, what were your initial thoughts?
Sahika Erkonan: I was in denial. I was upset. People told me I was an exile when I arrived in London. I denied it. I just wanted to focus on my research without thinking about the question of returning to my country. After my dismissal, which was four months later, this uncertainty became certain and weighed down on me far more than before. My first thought was that I had expected to be dismissed from the university. I wasn’t the first [to be dismissed]. It was clear that the government does not want intellectuals to raise their voices because we want peace, and this disturbs them, and this leads to our removal from the universities.
Index: Where were you when you found out you were dismissed? How did this affect you and your family?
Erkonan: I was at home in London. One of my friends let me know about our dismissal. Since that day, I haven’t gone back to Turkey. It has hugely affected my life. I realised that I cannot travel. If I decided to go home, I wouldn’t be able to come back to London to continue my research. I wouldn’t have any chance of finding a job in Turkey and I would be at risk all the time.
My family became very sad, but they were very supportive and my mother gave me lots of encouragement to finish my PhD here because any decision to return means uncertainty about leaving Turkey again due to passport issues. Actually, now I am not able to travel out of the United Kingdom either and have no clear residency status without applying for asylum. I am stuck here and this affects everything; my wellbeing, my ability to carry out my research, my political activity, my entire life. However, I am much better than last year and I feel I could define the difficulties I had and I can continue.
Before coming to London, I assumed I would go back to Turkey for a holiday within two months. Now I am still waiting to get my travel rights back, and have no idea when, if ever, they will be returned. I was lost for words following my dismissal. It wasn’t that I lost my job, I also lost my rights. Although I wasn’t the first to be dismissed, the feeling of loss still felt unknown.
Index: How did it impact your studies?
Erkonan: It fundamentally affected my research. The predominant focus I have in my life: work is being paralysed. I have a sense of not being in control and not being able to think clearly or critically. It takes incredible resilience and I often doubt myself. I was not able to work productively. I am so lucky that I am supervised by two amazing people in London. They are very supportive and understanding. They are not only dealing with my thesis, but they are also friendly and help me emotionally.
Immediately after I came here, my supervisors were aware of the risks and they wanted me to change my thesis fieldwork, as my initial research was based on Turkey. After four months, I was dismissed by Ankara University and unfortunately my everyday life was massively affected therefore I couldn’t concentrate easily. But now, I am in a totally different mindset.
Index: What was the most difficult part?
Erkonan: For me, the most difficult part is defining and understanding the feeling and emotions I’ve encountered. The uncertainty has a material, political basis that reflects the precariousness of the refugee’s sıtuation in Britain, a country with its own issues regarding the rights of foreigners. I have been interested to see how UK academia enforces conformity, not by jail sentences, but by neoliberalisation. Under the state of emergency, the law decrees against dissidents mean civil death. Your passport is taken away so you can’t travel abroad and you can’t find employment in public and private services. Trying to fight back is hard because you have no rights; you have to wait for the state of the emergency commission to make specific decisions about the law decrees.
During this process, I’ve never felt alone. Since the government’s attacks started, Turkey’s academics have stood in solidarity.
Index: Why do you think that people in academia are being brought to trial? What’s the government’s goal?
Erkonan: To silence dissent and crack down on critical thought. Academics for Peace is not the first instance of this; the government has always been in conflict with intellectuals, with students. It’s become especially clear that the AKP [Turkish ruling party] are trying to divide us academics by bringing us to trial individually. The authorities cannot judge over 2000 people without it being a huge international scandal; they are doing it individually to fly under the under the radar of international law but to keep us all in a continual state of fear and exhaustion. Every dissenter is at risk, we academics are only one part of that.
Index: What has been the biggest change for those in education within the country since the attempted coup?
Erkonan: Immediately after the attempted coup, the AKP government declared a state of emergency. Pressure on the education system by power had already been strong but thanks to the state of emergency, the authorities have had a chance to apply arbitrary policies. Therefore, they have applied whatever they want easily and they started to change the university staff.
Index: What do you think of the current educational system in Turkey? Has it declined/improved?
Erkonan: Universities in Turkey are not independent. They have been controlled by the Higher Education Council since the military coup in 1980. In the aftermath of the coup attempt of 2016, 5822 academics have lost their job. The state of emergency has given much more power to the authorities and we can say the educational system has declined rapidly.
Index: Do you feel the current climate will ever improve within the country?
Erkonan: Unfortunately this is a process which all of us have to witness in this climate. We are still having days which we are still trying to comprehend what’s happening. It seems the situation won’t improve within the country, but this is what the authorities want. Decreasing the hope for the future, increasing the fear of power.
If you look at Turkey’s past, you can guess and analyse how the current situation will play out. In terms of oppressing dissenters in the country, authoritarian states all have similar aspects, but whenever it occurs, we see it as new so it brings shock and fear, and sometimes it makes us silent. We live in an era, internationally, of the rise of authoritarianism. This places all those who do not fit into a narrow obedient vision of ‘the people’ at risk. Intellectual enquiry places us outside conformist ways of thinking so we will always be at risk. This era will take an international effort to maintain the existence of oppositional ideas, which are under attack globally. But I am not hopeless. One day this climate will change. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1531843923773-49fd17dd-fbe5-6″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
23 Apr 18 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
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Academic Sharo Ibrahim Garip
Even before the attempted coup in July 2016, the situation for academics within Turkey was drastically changing.
Marking a turning point for the country’s political environment, the failed July 2016 coup was an attempt to oust president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In 2016 hundreds of academics were dismissed from their positions without notice, including sociologist Sharo Ibrahim Garip, who taught at Yuzuncu Yil University in the East Anatolian city of Van, Turkey.
A German national with Kurdish roots, Garip was dismissed from his position at the university in February 2016. Accused of spreading terrorist propaganda, he was arrested in January 2016 and placed under a two-year travel ban, after he signed a petition, along with 1,227 other academics, urging the Turkish government to end its crackdown on Kurdish communities in Turkey’s southeast.
The petition by Academics for Peace called for a peaceful situation to the conflict with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a terrorist group seeking an independent Kurdish state within Turkey. Garip and the other academics denounced “war-like conditions” in the south-east and accused the government of an “extermination and expulsion policy” following the end of a ceasefire with the group and Turkish security forces in 2015. President Erdogan referred to them as “so-called intellectuals” and accused the signatories of “treason”.
Although there was no evidence Garip supported the group, he was still unable to leave the country or practice his profession, although his German citizenship prevented him from being detained pre-trial. Now working at the University of Essen-Duisburg, Garip spoke with Danyaal Yasin of Index on Censorship about his dismissal and the situation for academics following the coup.
Index: After you and hundreds of other academics were dismissed, what were your initial thoughts?
Sharo Ibrahim Garip: I was at the university. I received just a one-sentence decision from the university administration: “Mr Garip’s contract has been cancelled as the university no longer requires his services.” It was not surprising to me because I had already expected such an outcome. The history of the Turkish state is rife with instances of the elimination of political opposition, particularly critical thinkers such as academics and journalists. It was a planned action to eliminate critical thinkers from universities and the public sector. All those changes in the bureaucracy and public sector started before the military coup and continued following the civilian putsch. I could clearly observe the regime change in silence, but it was not possible to stop.
Index: Where were you when you found out? How did this affect you and your family?
Garip: I was detained on 15 January 2016 at the university in Van. I had to spend one night and one day in a jail cell of the special anti-terror unit of the police. I realised that I was a hostage from the beginning. I was threatened and humiliated during my interrogation. My family (who live mostly in Norway and Austria) was extremely concerned for my life. They still recall the events of the 1990s in Turkey, when many people were jailed/tortured or murdered, including the well-known cases of Hrant Dink and Tahir Elci, as well as many other intellectuals. The signatories have also been publicly exposed in the press and social media by government supporters and nationalists, leading to fears of reprisals from a mafia boss who declared that they will “spill the blood” of the signatories.
Index: What was the most difficult part?
Garip: I was removed from my academic position at Yuzuncu Yil (One Hundredth Year) University in Van in February 2016 because I had signed the petition by Academics for Peace, calling on the Turkish government to pursue a peaceful approach in its conflict with the Kurds, and in order to further punish me, the government forbade me to leave the country. I experienced a kind of structural violence, to live in Turkey without a job, health insurance, or a home. I shared a flat with friends for a while. I was trying to survive under very difficult conditions. I also experienced psychological violence. For example, all my phone calls were tapped and I was under regular surveillance. These had a very deep psychological effect on me. I didn’t want to meet with friends because I was constantly afraid of being attacked, imprisoned, killed, or tortured.
Under such circumstances is almost impossible to teach or produce any kind of academic work, write articles, do research, and so on.
It was painful to observe a country sink into political disaster again. Escalation of tensions, political collapse, and the war go back to the 90s, with civil war, political murders, missing people, bombing attacks on peaceful gatherings and meetings. It is also difficult to accept that at the moment approximately 70,000 students are in prison. One of my best students (who is only 22 years old) has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Index: Did you have to conceal your Kurdish heritage when studying or teaching?
Garip: No, I have never concealed my heritage. On the contrary, I disclosed my Kurdish heritage from the first day of teaching at the university in Van. Every day I talked to my students first in Kurdish and then continued in Turkish or sometimes in English. I arranged a Kurdish language course for sociology students as well. Kurds in Turkey have been assimilated for many years, a humiliating experience. Most Kurdish students have been psychologically damaged/traumatised by the violence perpetrated by the Turkish government. It was important to me to give my students a feeling of self-worth. This enabled me to establish a foundation of trust with my students, something not many other academics did.
Index: Why do you think academics are being brought to trial? What is the government’s goal?
Garip: It should be mentioned that Turkey has never, since its inception in 1921 until today, been a truly democratic country. Neither academic freedom nor freedom of speech has ever truly existed. The Turkish government has always thought of academics as well-paid public servants, a position which enjoys great privilege. Most Turkish academics have generally been loyal to the state and supported the official ideology. The petition for peace represented the first time that academics showed disloyalty to the state ideology, especially with regard to the Kurdish issue. For an authoritarian regime, such criticism was simply not acceptable. In this way, the government will punish academics. Turkey now appears to be inclined to go from an authoritarian regime to a totalitarian one. All undemocratic regimes try to maintain total control over society (the consolidation of institutional powers such as the NS regime). The masses must be repressed, and the media and intellectuals must be silenced and browbeaten. This is the goal of the government, which is why academics have been brought to trial. The academics have been punished in a number of different yet effective ways: dismissal, foreign travel bans, disciplinary processes.
Index: What has been the biggest change for academics in the country since the attempted coup?
Garip: The universities, schools, media, judiciary, and also parliament are now under the total control of the government. In particular, schools, the media, and universities have been shaped by a new ideology, which is both religious and nationalist. Many academics have been dismissed; more than 150,000 people in the public sector have lost their jobs. In the wake of the civilian putsch, 40,000 teachers, 8,247 academics, and 4,000 prosecutors and judges have been dismissed.
At universities, cultural events and demonstrations are forbidden. Students are not allowed to choose topics for their master or doctoral studies. At the moment four academics are in prison and another 15 academics and I have been sentenced to one year and three months in prison. Academics in Turkey are trying to survive; many of them live in very poor conditions. They have come up with new ideas such as establishing houses of culture or academies on the street. It is important to mention that academics and intellectuals all over the world, including Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, and many other prominent academics have supported academics in Turkey. The quality of education is declining rapidly because many well-educated professors and instructors are leaving Turkey.
Index: Was there backlash from other academics when the petition came out?
Garip: Yes, at first. After the petition for peace came out, a petition titled “We support our government against terrorism” was signed by 5,000 academics. Some colleagues at the university definitely distanced themselves from me. The reason for this was partly ideological and partly out of fear. However, some academics supported me, as did most of my students.
Index: Do you feel the current climate will ever improve within the country?
Garip: I don’t like to be completely pessimistic but it is very difficult to expect much change within a short period. Possibly the situation may improve over the long term. At the moment we are confronted with a regime change and a government acting in desperation. Turkish society is extremely polarised and the political climate embittered. Structures within the government have been almost completely stripped down. It will be not easy to shift society from an authoritarian structure to a democratic one. We cannot forget that half of Turkey wants a secular and democratic government.
Index: You are now based in Germany – how does it feel to teach again?
Garip: It is wonderful. Here I enjoy a climate of freedom with my students. As I stated above, I have academic freedom and freedom of speech here which I wish my Turkish friends also had. While I was in Van, Turkey I invited many professors from London, Canada, and Germany to give lectures to my students via Skype. I wish to thank them for their excellent contributions. If I have the opportunity I would like to teach my students in Van from Germany via Skype as well.
Index: How has your work changed since leaving Turkey?
Garip: To be honest it was not easy to settle down. I had to start from the bottom again. But thanks to the social government and constitutional democracy in Germany, I was fortunate to receive help from many of my friends. I received a scholarship first for three months from the University of Essen-Duisburg and now have a fellowship from the University of Cologne. I am currently working on a research project. I have finished a new article and can publish it without fear. In short, I enjoy academic freedom and freedom of speech again. I wish all my friends in Turkey could enjoy such freedoms as well.
Index: Do you think you will ever return to Turkey?
Garip: Yes, of course I will. Travelling is an essential human right. I will visit my friends there or attend conferences and work on research projects.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that “the intended coup was an attempt to protect the country’s democracy from president Recep Tayyip Erdogan”. This was updated on 24 April 2018[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1524653051961-3c4f18a5-613b-9″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
23 Jan 18 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”97694″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Since January 2016 the Academics for Peace case has become one of the symbols of the crackdown on democracy in Turkey.
No critical voices are spared in the repression: MPs, journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, students and many others are detained and/or have been prosecuted for their opinions and activities.
Each week brings new politically-motivated trials, where anonymous citizens and prominent figures of Turkey’s political and cultural life are faced with the most serious of criminal charges. Fundamental rights are put in the dock and go on trial and systematically abused. The week beginning 4 December was no exception, with trials targeting Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) politicians, dozens of journalists and the first hearings of scholars connected to Academics for Peace.
Academics for Peace are university professors and graduate students who signed a peace petition entitled We Will Not Be a Party To This Crime in January 2016. This statement denounced the government’s violations of human rights in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, demanded that access to these areas be granted to independent national and international observers and called for negotiations to secure a fair and lasting peace. The petition was initially signed by 1,128 academics and grew to 2,020 in the weeks after it was released. Since then, the signatories have suffered from multiple forms of repression, including criminal and administrative investigations, detention, dismissals and revocation of their passports. As of December 2017, more than 400 academics have been dismissed and hundreds of PhD students have lost their scholarships.
The repression is now reaching a new stage as signatories have been brought before the Istanbul High Criminal Court. Hundreds have been charged with spreading “terrorist propaganda” under Article 7(2) of Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law, which could mean up to seven-and-a-half years in prison. While the indictment has been levelled at the academics as a group, the hearings are individual and distributed over several months. The first hearings were held simultaneously in three different rooms of the Çağlayan courthouse on 5 and 7 December. They offered an insight not just into the deep flaws of the justice system, but also illustrated the determination of the academics to face this new ordeal with firmness and solidarity.
The week started with a day of events organised by the Academics for Peace co-ordination and the education trade union Eğitim-Sen in Istanbul. Meanwhile, several demonstrations and statements of support were released from Europe and the US. On the first day of the hearings, a press statement was organised in front of the courtroom. Besides the defendants, dozens of academics and several international observers were present. While only a few could attend the hearings due to the limited capacity of the rooms, numerous academics and students spent their days at the courthouse to support their colleagues.
The succession of hearings gave an insight into the diversity of the signatories of the petition. PhD students, young lecturers and well-known professors were brought to the court, while a few defendants now settled abroad could not attend. Although all the defendants in that week’s hearing came from two universities in Istanbul, many did not even know each other and greeted their alleged partners in crime at the doors of the courtroom, united by the smallest possible common denominator and the only ground for their criminal charge: their signature on the peace petition.
Lawyers had no difficulties in demonstrating the inconsistencies and blatant errors in the indictment. Incomplete or erroneous references to European cases related to freedom of expression, press articles and governmental statements were provided in lieu of evidence, mistranslated terms in English or Kurdish were among the mistakes most often quoted by the defendants’ lawyers. Beyond that, they insisted that the indictment was irrelevant and criticised the absence of any concrete evidence to support the charge of terror propaganda. Lawyers also reminded the court of the national and international legal texts, conventions and jurisprudence protecting freedom of expression. They underlined that critical thinking was essential to academic work and that by criticising the state, the defendants had behaved as one would expect of intellectuals. While a majority of academics indicated that they would not offer a statement at this first hearing, some presented a defence that followed the arguments of their lawyers, sometimes providing additional information on their personal and/or academic motivations for signing the petition and sharing how absurd they thought the case was. All the cases were adjourned to a later date, stretching from late December until May.
While the case the Academics for Peace sheds light on the persecution of critical scholars in Turkey, not only academic freedom is on trial there. Indeed, the first hearings gave an opportunity to the academics and their lawyers to remind the court of the context in which the peace petition was released: strong statements recalled how violence escalated in the Kurdish region of Turkey after the June 2015 elections and illustrated the impact of state repressions on civilians in the region — endless curfews, unlawful killing of children, corpses abandoned in the streets or kept in refrigerators, destruction of whole neighbourhoods in Cizre or Diyarbakir. Quoting the reports issued by national and international organisations, including the UN, these defences brought to the forefront the realities behind the words of the petition. Beyond this, some lawyers and defendants used the concepts of state violence, discrimination and racism to contextualise the last few years in the longer history of repression targeting the Kurdish region. As in many of the ongoing political trials in Turkey, the hearings turned into a denunciation of the multiple levels of state repression. The prosecutor and judges showed little reaction to these harsh critiques. Obviously, there was little to object to: like many journalists on trial, the academics were charged for making public what was true and ignored by none.
Finally, these hearings revealed yet again that the justice system in Turkey is at a breaking point. As the prosecutor who authored the indictment remained invisible, it was obvious that the judges and prosecutors had little familiarity with the cases. Appearing increasingly weary of the repetitive character of the hearings, they made a compulsive and ostensible use of their phones while the lawyers and defendants were talking. While the lawyers emphasised that the unique indictment should have resulted in a unique, collective trial, this demand was rejected by the court and a large part of the hearings were devoted to copy-pasting the charges and defences for each of the defendants.
Joining the long list of criminal cases against citizens who dared to express their opposition to the government and its policies, the trial of the Academics for Peace is a new illustration of the political use and abuse of justice to silent all critical voices in Turkey.
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