Letter Concerning Ongoing Pattern of Arrests of Turkish Academics Researching Kurdish Issues

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Dec 23, 2012 Turkey
[CAF logo. Image from MESA website] [CAF logo. Image from MESA website]

Letter Concerning Ongoing Pattern of Arrests of Turkish Academics Researching Kurdish Issues

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) concerning arrests and detentions of academics and researchers working on Kurdish issues.]

12 December 2012

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Office of the Prime Minister
Başbakanlık
Ankara, Turkey

Dear Prime Minister Erdoğan:

I write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America and its Committee on Academic Freedom in order to express our dismay and concern over the ongoing pattern of arrests and detentions of academics, scholars and students on the basis of their research and scholarship concerning Kurdish issues. Our concern regarding these violations of academic freedom is aggravated by our awareness that several of these individuals undertook a hunger strike for over two months—beginning on 12 September and ending on 18 November of this year—in protest of their detention.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 3,000 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

We have written to you previously about the cases of Ismail Beşikçi, Büşra Ersanlı, and Müge Tuzcuoğlu, each of whom was denied their right to freely express nonviolent opinions in the course of their academic research and scholarship by your government. Actions such as the widespread pattern of detention of professors and students alike for their work on Kurdish issues make it appear that the Turkish government has undertaken a campaign to inhibit the dissemination of knowledge about the conditions affecting the Kurdish community in the country and even to prevent Kurdish, leftist, and other students who support Kurdish rights from pursuing their right to an education. Government efforts to silence scholars who voice support for the rights of Kurdish citizens in Turkey send a chilling message to Turkey’s scholarly community; Kurdish communities in Turkey and beyond; and to scholars working on the region, wherever they may be based. We are very concerned about what seems to be a clear and ongoing campaign to arrest those who seek a peaceful political solution to the Kurdish problem.

While all of the cases of academics detained in connection to their work on Kurdish issues should be subject to immediate review and reconsideration, we are particularly concerned about the crackdown against students for engaging in activities protected by basic norms of academic freedom in the course of their studies and research. In this letter, we draw your attention particularly to the circumstances of seven students currently in detention for engaging in nonviolent political speech, attending academic events and conducting research and writing, all of which should be protected by their right to academic freedom. These seven detained students are: Deniz Zarakolu; Mustafa Polat; Erdal Ozmaskan; Derya Goregenli; Mehmet Mesut Tanrıkulu; Gulan Kılıçoğlu; and Emine Akman. All seven have been detained on the same grounds, namely that their academic research activities or campus political activism constitutes evidence of their membership in the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK). In fact, the accusations brought against these students concern what are universally recognized aslegitimate academic and scholarly endeavors.

Five of the students were detained and tried as part of a police operation allegedly against the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK), while the remaining two—Kılıçoğlu and Akman—were detained on similar grounds, but in separate cases. In all seven, the allegations are directly related to activities protected by academic freedom, freedom of thought, and freedom of association.

The five students detained and charged pursuant to the anti-KCK operation are: Deniz Zarakolu, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Political Science Department at Istanbul Bilgi University; Mustafa Polat, an undergraduate student in the English Language and Literature Department at Istanbul University; Erdal Ozmaskan, an undergraduate student in the Computer Science Department at Istanbul University; Derya Goregenli, an undergraduate in the Communications and Media Relations Department at Istanbul Bilgi University; and Mehmet Mesut Tanrıkulu, an undergraduate student in the Chemical Engineering Department of Istanbul University. Between the dates of 4 October and 31 October 2011, each of these students was detained and accused of membership in the KCK on the basis of having attended or given lectures at a “Political Academy” sponsored by the Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi (the Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP), the legal political party representing Kurdish constituents in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. The BDP Academy was supported by dozens of faculty members from accredited Turkish universities who gave lectures at the Academy concerning Kurdish rights and civil society organizing. Lectures offered at the Academy included such topics as: the social production of gender through public education; the unity of human rights and democracy; emigration; ethics and politics; managing natural resources in the twenty-first century; and identity issues in Turkey. Zarakolu, Polat, Ozmaksan, Goregenli, and Tanrikulu have all been detained for nothing more than their participation in this civil society initiative and leading discussions or joining panels on subjects of ordinary academic inquiry. The evidence submitted in court against these students comprised photographs showing them entering and exiting the BDP Academy building and testimony from the students themselves and others as to course offerings. The ongoing detention of these students based on charges grounded in nothing more than protected academic activities is a direct violation of academic freedom. Further, these students are being prevented from completing their studies by virtue of their detention and unreasonable constraints placed on their right to sit for final examinations or submit their research and writing towards completion of their degrees.

Two additional cases of students charged with terrorism also constitute violations of academic freedom. Gulan Kılıçoğlu was detained on 1 April 2010 and has since been tried and convicted of membership in the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK) based on evidence related entirely to her academic research activities. Kılıçoğlu traveled to Salahaddin University in Arbil, Iraq to complete research that she had undertaken on Kurdish politics as a fourth year student in the faculty of political science at Ankara University. This research trip was cited by the judge as evidence of her membership in the KCK when he announced her conviction under the Anti-Terror Law on 15 March 2012 and sentenced her to a prison term of six years and three months. Arresting a student on the grounds that research on Kurdish language rights is consistent with membership in the KCK—rather than specific and direct evidence of membership—suggests that the Turkish government views all research on political issues as tantamount to engagement in prohibited activities. That judgment defies reason.

Like Kılıçoğlu, Emine Akman is an undergraduate detained in the course of her undergraduate studies on the basis of allegations that suggest guilt by association resulting from her Kurdish identity and the fact that she is a student of journalism. The formal charges against Akman relate to her alleged presence at a demonstration while completing her studies at the Marmara University Faculty of Journalism. Her attendance at the peaceful demonstration is corroborated only by an out-of-focus photograph and constitutes the only grounds—other than her identity as a Kurdish journalism student—for the claim that she is a member of the KCK. In keeping with allegations by other detained students, Akman’s attorney has reported that Akman has been subjected to ill-treatment in detention and that she has been prohibited from completing her final examinations while in custody.

None of the students whose cases we have highlighted has been accused of using violence, nor is there any evidence that any of them has ever endorsed its use, either publicly or in academic work. Each student appears to have been targeted solely for having exercised his or her right to freedom of expression and association, a right protected by Turkey’s consent to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

As we have previously communicated to you, freedom of speech and free expression of ideas are essential to the mission and purpose of higher education. I respectfully ask you to intervene in the cases of Deniz Zarakolu, Mustafa Polat, Erdal Ozmaskan, Derya Goregenli, Mehmet Mesut Tanrıkulu, Gulan Kılıçoğlu, and Emine Akman to see that they are released and that charges and/or convictions against them based on evidence of scholarly activities are reversed and withdrawn. Our association will continue to monitor these detentions as well as those of other students, and we hope that your government will uphold the integrity of Turkish universities by ensuring that the right to academic freedom for students and faculty is protected.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your positive response.

Sincerely,

Peter Sluglett
MESA President
Professor, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore

Cc:
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanı, Abdullah Gül (Turkish president)
Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Başkanı Cemil Çiçek (President of the Turkish National Assembly)
Turkish Justice Minister, Adalet Bakanı Sadullah Ergin
Chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights, Barbara Lochbihler
Member of the Cabinet of Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Carl Hartzell
Special Commissioner for EU Enlargement, Štefan Füle
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks
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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412