CAF Letter on Recent Amendments Made to Turkey’s Higher Education Law

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Jun 11, 2020 Turkey
CAF Letter on Recent Amendments Made to Turkey’s Higher Education Law

CAF Letter on Recent Amendments Made to Turkey’s Higher Education Law

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Middle East Studies Association on 8 June 2020 in response to the Turkish government's recent amendments to the country's Higher Education Law.]

H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
President of the Republic of Turkey
T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Genel Sekreterliği
06689 Çankaya, Ankara
Turkey 

Dear President Erdoğan:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the recent amendments made to Turkey’s Higher Education Law (Number 7243). These amendments, published in the Official Gazette on 17 April 2020 (Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanunlarda Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Kanun), continue the antidemocratic expansion of your government’s control over universities by enabling arbitrary and unconstitutional forms of punishment against faculty and politically motivated closures of private universities.

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 more than 2700 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.

Law Number 7243 constitutes the legal basis of the Higher Education Council (Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu, or YÖK), which regulates and controls university activities in Turkey. YÖK is a political legacy of the 1980 military coup that should have been abolished or had its authorities dramatically curtailed following the transition to civilian rule in 1983. Instead, your government has bolstered its already extensive control of Turkish academia in unparalleled ways. Regrettably, YÖK’s record demonstrates a steady increase in violations of academic freedom and the rights of university students and faculty. In response to these violations,  our committee has written numerous letters of concern  (e.g. 7 January  2016, 30 October  2015).

The recent amendments to Law No. 7243 are emblematic of the increasing encroachment on academic freedom in Turkey under your government’s leadership. The amendments introduce a whole set of new offenses that will result in disciplinary actions against faculty, ranging from warnings and reprimands to dismissal. Most of these offenses are ill-defined and in direct contradiction to any notion of academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression. For example, according to the new law, “being inattentive to the development of the subordinates” is an offense punishable by warning. Similarly, the law designates any complaint raised outside of regular procedures as an offense that requires a warning, enabling retaliation against whistleblowers. Under the new law, faculty may be disciplined by YÖK for “being verbally disrespectful toward superiors.” Even more problematically, a scholar could be disciplined by reprimand for “engaging in attitudes and behaviors” that are deemed outside “public morality and decency” and incompatible with her/his academic titles. Such vague phrases not only pave the way to the arbitrary punishment of faculty for expressing dissent to their superiors, but also allow the chastising of any scholar who goes against the grain of societal norms, including but not limited to scholars with or scholars working on non-normative gender or sexual identities, orientations, or expressions.

An equally alarming aspect of the new law is the provision that allows YÖK to lay off academics for “engaging in or supporting activities that qualify as terror.” Further, the addition of a new clause that criminalizes the use of public resources to “engage and support activities that qualify as terror” is distressing. In light of your government’s propensity to treat dissent or opposition as a form of terrorism or support for terrorism, this clause suggests that going forward you may criminalize academic conferences on topics deemed critical of your government’s policies. For example, as we have documented in numerous letters, terrorism charges are systematically used against academics voicing dissent against the official Kurdish policies. Indeed,  judges and government officials, including you, President Erdoğan, frequently deploy over-reaching definitions of membership in a terrorist organization, effectively erasing the distinction between terrorism and peaceful dissent. We have written to you repeatedly about such pretextual dismissals and prosecutions, most recently in the case of the Academics for Peace, academics who were put on trial for signing a petition calling on your government to resume peaceful negotiations with the PKK. Despite the Turkish Constitutional Court’s ruling that the prosecution of the peace petition signatories on charges of "terror propaganda" represented a violation of their freedom of expression, these new amendments are indicative of your government’s intention to continue the unconstitutional persecution of scholars supportive of Kurdish rights.

Law No. 7243 also introduces clauses regulating the closure of private universities, inflicting another devastating blow to academic freedom and the autonomy of higher education in Turkey. These clauses seem to be carefully worded to specifically target Istanbul Şehir University, a concern that we raised in our letter dated 20 May 2020.   Beyond Istanbul Şehir University, the presence of provisions in the law facilitating action by the government to close private universities in Turkey remains a deeply troubling indication of your government’s unwillingness to respect the autonomy of the higher education sector and basic precepts of academic freedom.

As a member state of the Council of Europe and a signatory of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Turkey is required to protect academic freedom, which is grounded in the freedom of thought, expression and assembly. Turkey is also a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), all of which protect the rights to freedom of expression and association, which are at the heart of academic freedom. These rights are also enshrined in articles 25-27 of the Turkish Constitution.

We respectfully ask that your government consider repealing the aforementioned amendments to Law No. 7243. We also ask that your government desist from continuing to use the pretext of terrorist propaganda in ways that criminalize the legitimate and protected activities of academics. If these amendments remain in place, then, at a minimum, we urge your government to take all necessary steps to ensure that YÖK refrains from using its new authorities to engage in disciplinary actions and dismissals against faculty, and that it desists from abrogating the autonomy of private universities either by replacing their administration or by threatening them with closure. More generally, we respectfully repeat our numerous requests that your government take steps to reverse its present course and restore protection for academic freedom and the autonomy of higher education in Turkey. Against a backdrop of mounting international condemnation of the erosion of democratic rights and freedoms under your rule, taking steps to protect academic freedom and the right to education would be an important step to address concerns about human rights in Turkey.

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

Sincerely,

Dina Rizk Khoury
MESA President
Professor, George Washington University

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor, University of Southern California

cc:

Ibrahim Kalın, Chief Advisor to the President and Presidential Spokesman

Mustafa Şentop, Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Başkanı (President of the Turkish National Assembly)

Abdülhamit Gül, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Adalet Bakanı (Justice Minister of the Republic of Turkey)

Yekta Saraç, Türkiye Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu (YÖK) Başkanı (President of the Turkish Higher Education Council)

Ziya Selçuk, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Milli Eğitim Bakanı (Minister of Education of the Republic of Turkey)

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Dışişleri Bakanı (Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey)

Bülent Ekici, President of Istanbul Sehir University

Maria Arena, Chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights

Viktor Almqvist, Press Officer for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament

Josep Borrell Fontelles, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

Fiona Knab-Lunny, Member of Cabinet of Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

Hannah Neumann, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights

Raphael Glucksmann, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights

Christian Danielsson, Director-General for Enlargement at the European Commission

Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

Kati Piri, Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs, European Parliament

Nacho Sanchez Amor, Member of European Parliament and European Parliament Standing Turkey Rapporteur

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

David Kaye, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

Koumbou Boly Barry, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education
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