CAF Letter on Detentions of Boğaziçi University Students in Turkey

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Feb 5, 2021 Turkey
CAF Letter on Detentions of Boğaziçi University Students in Turkey

CAF Letter on Detentions of Boğaziçi University Students in Turkey

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Middle East Studies Association 4 February 2021 in response to the recent detentions of Boğaziçi University students in Turkey.]


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 dismay concerning the detentions of Boğaziçi University students over recent days. Following a month of protests against the appointment of a member of your political party as rector of the university, a matter we wrote to you about on 7 January 2021, five Boğaziçi University students were detained over the course of 29-30 January, for being “LGBT deviants” (according to your Minister of Interior), and then a far larger group of 159 students were detained on 1 February for protesting the earlier detentions. On 2 February, the protests against the detention of students spread nationwide, leading to police crackdowns and the detention of 279 more students in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir.

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 2800 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 are deeply concerned about the increasingly routine arbitrary detention of students and outraged that Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu publicly denounced Boğaziçi University students as “LGBT deviants.” This alleged deviance relates to an art project created by members of the Boğaziçi Art Collective, some of whom are LGBTI+ identified. We are shocked that your government, which is under international and constitutional obligations to protect the free speech rights of these college students, ordered these arrests. Moreover, the arrests appear to be in response to the urging of media—owned by your government’s supporters—which broadcast claims that the art in question was offensive to their religious sensibilities. As we indicated in our letter of 20 January 2021, the imposition of government-sanctioned standards of morality on the activities of Turkish universities has the effect of stifling creativity, trampling on rights of free speech and academic freedom, and worryingly singling out LGBTI+-identified individuals and subjects of study for targeted rights violations. These arrests and the media climate that your government has enabled, stigmatizing students based on religious sensibilities, are the realization of the fears we gave voice to last month. 

The mass arrests of 1 February occurred while students were peacefully protesting both your undemocratic appointment of Melih Bulu as rector of Boğaziçi University and the detention of the five students involved in the art project. According to news reports, the police raided the campus and detained 159 students and faculty on the pretext that they were obstructing building entrances and engaging in unlawful protest. Students were reportedly subjected to severe mistreatment, including beatings that resulted in broken bones among other injuries requiring hospitalization. Those who were detained were reportedly deprived of food and water, while other students remained trapped inside the campus and barred from leaving. Disturbing images of snipers situated on the roofs of buildings adjacent to the campus gate are emblematic of your administration’s treatment of university students as enemies. The news of the detentions resulted in further protests on 2 February, with hundreds of more students and other protesters detained, this time in Istanbul and Ankara. This pattern of meeting protest with ever greater repression is deeply alarming, all the more so because it is targeted at universities.

This approach to students and higher education more generally is sadly consistent with your government’s record of stifling dissent and criminalizing protest. Indeed, last month your government sent teams of police commando units to the homes of Boğaziçi University students, ramming doors and breaking down living room and bedroom walls to enter their residences at dawn instead of engaging in ordinary arrests. The spectacular violence your government deployed against the students underscores both your extreme intolerance of any criticism of your government and the degree to which you treat political opponents as dangerous criminals. Detained students at the time reported abusive treatment and threats of sexual assault by law enforcement officials once they were in custody, with the most severe mistreatment and sexual harassment being reported by LGBTI+ students. 

In addition to the criminalization of protests against your government, the public statements made by you and members of your government demonizing the Boğaziçi University students is deeply troubling. In various speeches, you have labeled these students as “elites,” likened them to “terrorists” for opposing your policies, and then targeted them as “immoral”—implying specifically that students identified as LGBTI+ are “deviants”. Likewise, the AKP governor of Istanbul issued a statement on 1 February, emphasizing that the Boğaziçi University’s LGBTI+ Club members were among those detained. The singling out of the LGBTI+ Club despite the fact that members of other clubs also participated in the protests and were among those arrested is an example of the casual and gratuitous homophobia that your government has embraced. 

According to the latest news reports on 3 February, your appointed rector, Melih Bulu, has ordered the closure of the LGBTI+ Student Club at Boğaziçi University. Under the university’s bylaws, this is not an order that the Rector should be able to issue unilaterally, but rather one subject to stipulated procedures. Further, reports suggest that the actions that form the basis for the closure of the LGBTI+ Student Club were misattributed to them. Thus, acting on inaccurate information and in contravention of university procedures, Melih Bulu has compounded the undemocratic circumstances of his appointment by using his role to govern the university in an undemocratic and improper manner that promotes an intolerant and homophobic climate at Boğaziçi.

As we have mentioned in prior letters (see again our letters of 7 January 2021 and 20 January 2021), the pattern of violations of academic freedom and the right to education by your government has gone from bad to worse. Boğaziçi University has often been singled out for denunciations by your government.  We see now that your government’s targeting of Boğaziçi’s students, academics and the autonomy of the university’s governance has only accelerated with each passing year, culminating in the literal handcuffing of the university’s campus, the physical destruction of students’ homes, and outright assault against faculty and students. The intolerant and even violent treatment to which you have subjected both faculty and students at Boğaziçi University over the course of the last month is in keeping with your government’s disgraceful record of violating academic freedom and freedom of speech, and your determined efforts to undermine the autonomy and quality of higher education in Turkey.

As a member state of the Council of Europe and a signatory to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Turkey is required to protect 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. The rights being trampled by your government’s actions are also enshrined in articles 25-27 and 42 of the Turkish Constitution.

We urge your government to immediately secure the release of all Boğaziçi University students and faculty detained on 29-30 January and 1 February 2021, and all others—students, faculty, and other protesters—detained on 2 February 2021 as they protested the earlier detentions. We further ask that your government restore the tradition of university self-government in Turkey, withdrawing not only Bulu’s appointment as rector to Boğaziçi University, but also, as we called for in our letter of  7 November 2016,  rescinding the legal framework that enables you to make appointments of university rectors by presidential decree. We also urge you to adhere to democratic principles in higher education, respect the human rights of the students and faculty, and ensure that officials responsible for the mistreatment of the detained students are held accountable.

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)

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

Irene Khan, 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

Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Rektörlüğü (Office of the Rector of Bogazici University)

Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Mezunlar Derneği (Bogazici University Alumni Association)

Matthew A Palmer, Deputy Assistant Secretary, United States Department of State
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