Letter by American Sociological Association Expressing Concern for Signatories of Academics for Peace Statement in Turkey

Letter by American Sociological Association Expressing Concern for Signatories of Academics for Peace Statement in Turkey

Letter by American Sociological Association Expressing Concern for Signatories of Academics for Peace Statement in Turkey

By : Jadaliyya Reports

 

[The following letter was issued by the American Sociological Association on 29 January 2016 regarding ongoing threats to academic freedom in Turkey.]

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu

Office of the Prime Minister

Başbakanlık

06573 Ankara, Turkey

Via Email: cumhurbaskanligi@tccb.gov.tr

We write on behalf of more than 12,000 members of the American Sociological Association to express our grave concern about the actions that the Turkish government has taken against signatories to the Academics for Peace statement.

The American Sociological Association has a long-standing position of supporting the free exchange of ideas across national, state, cultural, and social borders that is consistent with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “[e]veryone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression [including the right] to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impact information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

The Academics for Peace statement, which calls for a halt to military action in the southeastern region of Turkey, a lifting of curfews in some Kurdish-majority cities, and the development of a roadmap to lasting peace, has been falsely depicted as supporting terrorism. The supporters were derided as traitors. We understand the Turkish government has arrested some of the scholars who signed the statement (charging them with treason) and filed a lawsuit against all those who signed, and that the Higher Education Council (YÖK) in Turkey has launched investigations into scholars who signed the statement with the stated purpose of removing those people from their university positions. This overall atmosphere of intimidation has culminated in a public campaign involving violent threats against the signatories. These actions are a violation of Turkey’s responsibility to protect freedom of thought, expression, and assembly as a member state of the Council of Europe, and as a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights as well as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

President Erdoğan’s criticism of the signatories as “so-called” intellectuals and “traitors” – simply for disagreeing with government action – conflicts with the basic principles of free expression, which are necessary for the maintenance of a vibrant democracy. Moreover, the chilling effect that the government’s actions will likely have on intellectual thought will degrade the quality of scholarly ideas coming from the many Turkish universities inwhich your government has invested. Turkish universities produce world-class scholarship and intellectuals who have international influence, but that production of innovative thought can only continue when ideas can be exchanged and debated free from government repression. As sociologists, we urge you to consider how government action intended to stifle unpopular ideas only serves to create a climate of fear that will, in the long term, weaken Turkish society and Turkey’s standing in the global scholarly community.

For these reasons, we urge you to drop all legal action against signatories to the Academics for Peace statement, to ensure that YÖK end all investigations into signatories, and to encourage universities to support a climate of free expression on their campuses by ceasing any pending investigations of their faculty who have supported the Academics for Peace statement.

Sincerely,

Paula England, Professor of Sociology, New York University

Past President

Ruth Milkman

Distinguished Professor of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center

President

Michele Lamont, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

President Elect

Bcc:

Hon. John Kerry

Hon. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Hon. Ismail Kahraman

Hon. Bekir Bozdağ

Dr. Yekta Saraç

Dr. İhsan Sabuncuoğlu

Dr. Hüseyin Akan

Dr. Ramazan Kaplan

Dr. Mustafa Inal

Dr. Hayri Coşkun

Dr. Faruk Kocacık

Dr. Murat Tuncer

Dr. Nigar Demircan Ҫakar

Dr. Ebubekir Ceylin

Hon. Barbara Lochbihler

Hon. Monika Kacinskiene

Hon. Johannes Hahn

Hon. Nils Muižnieks

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      In this episode of Long Form, Hala Rharrit discusses the factors that led her to resign from the US State Department, the mechanisms by which institutional corruption and ideological commitments of officials and representatives ensure US support for Israel, and how US decision-makers consistently violate international law and US laws/legislation. Rharrit also addresses the Trump administration’s claim that South Africa is perpetrating genocide against the country’s Afrikaaner population, and how this intersects with the US-Israeli campaign of retribution against South Africa for hauling Israel before the ICJ on charges of genocide.

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      In this episode, Mandy Turner discusses the vital role think tanks play in the policy process, and in manufacturing consent for government policy. Turner recently published a landmark study of leading Western think tanks and their positions on Israel and Palestine, tracing pronounced pro-Israel bias, where the the key role is primarily the work of senior staff within these institutions, the so-called “gatekeepers.”

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