Istanbul police suspend students protesting against YOK, November 2015. Demotix/ Sahan Nuhoglu. All rights reserved.Following the arrest
of 27 academics, and a criminal investigation into more than a thousand individuals
across 90 Turkish universities, the Turkish Government has taken significant
steps towards restricting academic freedoms. The academics who were taken into custody have since been
released, but if convicted of charges of
‘propagandising for a terrorist organisation’, or insulting the Turkish
state, could face up to 5 years in prison.
Initial tensions begun
a month ago following an open letter to Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, signed by foreign
academics, and including Noam Chomsky. What began as a highly publicized spat
between Erdogan and Chomsky has now become a catalyst for the current wave of
arrests, and has raised concerns regarding a possible witch-hunt against academics
critical of the AKP government.
According to the
‘Academics for Peace’ initiative, when the petition was initially released on
Monday January 11, over 1,400 academics and researchers from Turkey and abroad
had signed the document with more than 1,200 signatures originating from
Turkish institutions of higher education. The Turkish Council of Higher Education
(YÖK) has since indicated that it will be taking legal action against the
Turkish signatories of the Academics for Peace petition. The events have
sparked an international outcry, as well as inspiring numerous calls for
solidarity.
While the website for
the original petition is no longer accessible online, the document has spawned
petitions of solidarity from Turkish journalists, filmmakers, lawyers,
publishers, and foreign academics. A petition on Change.org featuring a copy of
the original petition has amassed nearly 4,000 signatures, and a UK version of
the Academics for Peace initiative has collected more than 800 signatures from
professors and researchers across British Universities. The petition is
expected to be sent to the UK’s national press on Monday.
And yet when the US
embassy issued a statement professing concern over the arrests of the academics
in Turkey, it wasted little time in simultaneously denouncing and rejecting the
petition itself. The statement indirectly described the petition as containing
‘controversial’ and ‘unpopular’ views, and emphasized that the US does ‘not
agree with the opinions expressed by those academics’.
The inverted nature of
such a statement, in which freedom of expression is defended, but the
expression itself derided, completely undermines the potency of the message,
regarding the unwarranted arrests. Of course this betrays a lingering
discomfort with the intrusion of intellectuals into the realm of politics, a
world deemed privy only to think tanks and politicos, or what Christopher
Hitchens once referred to as the ‘lumpen academics’ of the professional foreign
policy establishment.
That being said, the petition
itself is hardly a radical document. To realize this one has only to read the text.
It clearly spells out both the humanitarian consequences of the conflict in South
East Turkey as well as making various
demands for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The document is urgent but
focused. It refers to the conflict as a ‘massacre’ and as a violation of
international law, but also suggests options for reconciliation and the
willingness to cooperate with parliament, international organizations, and political
parties.
As David Graeber – one
of the more prolific signatories– has pointed out, nowhere does the text do
anything else but call for peaceful negotiations. It even offers avenues of cooperation on behalf of the
academics. The text contains none of the supposedly terrorist or treasonous
rhetoric it is being accused of. That it would be interpreted as such is highly
suggestive of the reckless and inflammatory way in which Erdoğan has seized
upon the petition as a means by which to polarize and vilify even the most
conciliatory of criticisms.
To imply that the
petition is in any way a manifesto or a call to arms, let alone a treasonable
or terrorist document, is simply to deny the very practical and
solution-oriented call for peace that it poses. This also goes a way towards
explaining why so many academics in Turkey and abroad were willing to sign the
petition in the first place; it underlines the popular opinion that a peaceful
resolution of the Kurdish conflict is imaginable, feasible, and to be desired.
Let us also remember
that the petition’s main focus – that of a peaceful end to the Kurdish crisis –
was until not too long ago one of the AKP’s top priorities. In fact, putting an
end to the so-called Kurdish issue was a key part of Erdoğan’s political
platform. For the very same government to now suggest that any desire for
reconciliation with the PKK is treasonous emphasizes the radical shift the
party has undergone in recent times.
As such one can only
conclude that the Turkish Government’s heavy-handed reaction to the petition is
but the continuation of a wider trend of restricting civil liberties and freedom of speech. For years the
Government has sought to insipidly infiltrate university administrations by
restructuring the Council for Higher Education, granting it powers to take over
private universities, meddling with academic appointments and tightening
restrictions on grant money. Now, it seems, the fight against academic freedoms
has broken out into the mainstream of Turkish political rhetoric.
Following the release
of the initial petition, Erdoğan took to the stage to criticize what he
referred to as ‘crappy so-called academics’. More specifically, he warned not
all professors to think themselves as ‘so-called intellectuals’. The formulation
demonstrates how academia has increasingly come to be seen as a diploma-producing
machine, rather than a space for criticism. Indeed, his rhetoric points toward a longstanding
frustration with pesky intellectuals acting outside the professional confines
of the classroom.
Yet the specific
distinction he makes between ‘professors’ and ‘intellectuals’ also indicates a
desire for universities to become centres of (knowledge) production in the conservative
sense. One of Erdoğan’s key criticisms has always been reserved for groups who
supposedly step outside the boundaries of their socially assigned positions.
His attacks on women, journalists, foreigners, and academics have always
centred on the fact that they should know better than to exceed their social
boundaries. If universities fail to challenge such notions of a rigid society, then
they too will ultimately succumb to such clear-cut expectations of conformity.
Seen in this light, Erdoğan’s
scalding rebuke to academics that they must ‘ pick a side’, i.e. to be either
with the Turkish State or with the terrorists must remind us ( as it did Noam
Chomsky) of when former President G.W. Bush made virtually the same pronouncement
over a decade ago following the attack on the twin towers.
The subsequent failure
of American and European progressives to communicate the now commonly accepted irrationality,
even illegality, of the invasion of Iraq shows that the desire to curtail
academic expression is a global issue, not just one of developing democracies. Think
of recent attempts in the UK to censor and stifle academics’ rights to express
themselves freely on contentious issues (and to grant voice to the ‘radical’
opinions of others). This is not a
complaint that is unique to Turkey.
Since then, an
unexpected and frightening escalation of the reaction to the petition has been
the awakening of an ultra-nationalist presence on Turkish campuses. Already
images have circulated showing gangs of nationalist students marking
professors’ doors, and posting threats to individuals who signed the petition.
It is the Erdoğan-doctrine
in full force; to deny dissenting voices any expression on their own terms, and
to instead ignite and awaken pre-existing social divides that have long lain
dormant. As anyone who has visited any of the big campuses in Turkey can attest
to, the student body is not necessarily a homogenous one, nor should it be. Yet
the on-campus resurgence of socio-political divisions, including radical
nationalism may prove more detrimental to the future of Turkish academia in the
long term than the actual theatrics of the arrests themselves. Already
professors across the country have expressed fear of going to work, or are
otherwise being pushed out by administrations less willing to expose themselves
to attack.
And while academics
outside Turkey may not face a specific threat, it would be a great mistake to
forego the fruitful progress that had just begun to make itself felt on Turkish
campuses. To allow Turkish academics to be vilified and isolated would be to
concede defeat to the most conservative and anti-intellectual impulses of
Turkish society.
Finally, it is hard to
underestimate the severe impact the arrests will have on Turkish universities’
attempts to internationalize. For years there have been threats from European
universities to pull the plug on Erasmus exchanges. The highly publicized
arrests of foreign students, the Ankara campus riots, and the purported disappearance
of large quantities of grant money
into the pockets of university administrators have made European and American
universities doubt the wisdom of pursuing further ties to Turkish institutions
of higher education.
A reversal of
international cooperation would have a devastating effect on the
diversification of the student body, but also on the extensively integrated
language schools, not to speak of the accommodation and housing market. Most
importantly, it would stifle Turkish students’ access and exposure to ideas and
experiences from beyond their own country.
Coincidentally, Turkey
will be hosting this year’s World Congress, the annual conference of the
International Political Science association (IPSA). The conference is one of
the biggest events in the field of political science, and will see thousands of
researchers, professors, and grad students descending upon Istanbul to discuss
a range of issues under the auspicious theme of ‘politics in a world of
inequality’. It also provides an important networking opportunity for Turkish universities
and international cooperation in research projects. The conference presents an
urgent opportunity for academics from around the world to stand in solidarity
with their Turkish counterparts.
This is why it is so
urgent to show solidarity with academics in Turkey. To forsake our Turkish
colleagues at this crucial point in time would be to waste decades’ worth of internationalization
and cooperation, and turn our backs on the most diverse and progressive
elements of Turkish society. This is why the subsequent solidarity petitions
are so vital. They indicate to the Turkish Government, and to the world, an
ongoing commitment to securing Turkish academia as part of a global community
of researchers, despite the challenges they face in their own country.