Amnesty International. Twitter. Some rights reserved.Within the academic world, the long-awaited summer is the prize one gets after hectic semesters. It offers a welcome break from the immediacy and constancy of teaching, from committees and administrative work, giving one the ability to slow down, to breathe, and focus on research and writing.
For many Turkish academics, however, this one is bound to be a summer of heated legal battles, harassment, and uncertainty instead of being a much needed-break. First, on July 12 and 13, four academics will face the judge in the southern city of Mersin on accounts of “propagating terrorist propaganda” in their Facebook posts. Then on July 20, the Higher Education Council (Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu - YÖK as it is commonly referred to in Turkey), the central body that overlooks the whole higher education system in Turkey, will hear the defences of 25 academics, whose files were sent to YÖK by universities with the request that those academics are removed from their profession and duties as civil servants. If YÖK goes forward with these requests, it will mean that these academics will never be allowed to work at universities in Turkey again.What was maybe more surprising was how that speech then unleashed a massive harassment and smear campaign against academics by various forces, including local police, parts of the judiciary, university administrations, media, and various conservative groups.
What the academics in both cases have in common is that they are signatories to a, by now widely known, peace petition. The petition that stated “We will not be a party to this crime” was signed by 1128 academics and was read aloud in a press conference on January 11 while military operations were going on in Southeast Turkey where towns have been put under curfew. It was a reaction to the ending of the peace process between PKK and the Turkish state at the hands of the AKP government, and to the massive destruction that was going on in Kurdish towns. This petition and the academics who signed it were immediately taken up and targeted by President Erdoğan in a furious speech he gave after the Sultanahmet bombing on January 12, in which he called academics ‘dark, cruel people’ and blamed them of treason and supporting terrorism.
