The American Political Science Association (APSA) has written a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, expressing its deepest concern over recent crackdown on a group of academics for their criticism of the government policies in the Southeast, urging the Turkish government to take all steps to fulfill its duties to protect free expression and academic freedom.
“On behalf of the American Political Science Association, we write to express our alarm and deepest concern regarding reports of punitive measures, including detentions and criminal investigations, launched against Turkish academics who signed a petition addressing Turkish government policies in southeastern Turkey. We urge you to end these measures against the petition’s signatories, to ensure the safety and well-being of scholars in Turkey, and to ensure academic freedom remains a component of Turkey’s commitment to higher education,” the letter said.
Defining APSA as a scholarly association that represents more than 13,000 US and internationally based professors and students of political science, the letter said the organization’s membership also includes scholars within Turkey and scholars of Turkish politics.
On Jan. 11, a declaration signed by 1,128 academics from 89 universities in Turkey called on the government to end the ongoing fighting between security forces and militants of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has inflicted devastation in some residential areas of several predominantly Kurdish-populated towns.
After Erdoğan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and pro-government figures harshly criticized the signatories of the declaration, accusing them of "treason," "disseminating terrorist propaganda," for favoring a non-military resolution in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast via their declaration, Turkey's Higher Education Board (YÖK) launched administrative investigations into dozens of academics as many others have faced legal action by a number of prosecutors.
“Without any further (or contradictory) information, these measures appear to be punishment for protected expression, including expression related to signatories’ professional competence as scholars,” the APSA letter said. “Dismissals, detentions, and criminal investigations for such comments therefore suggests retaliation against scholars for nonviolent exercise of academic freedom and free expression, both recognized under international standards including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, both of which Turkey has ratified, similarly require the government to uphold citizens’ freedom of expression, as does Turkey’s own Constitution,” it added.
The scholars urged the government of Turkey to take all steps to fulfill its duties to protect free expression and academic freedom by ending all measures to penalize signatories of the petition. “We also urge the Government to ensure signatories are protected against public threats of bodily harm that have been made against them,” they added.
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