On January 10, 2016, 1,128 academics published a declaration titled “We will not be party to this crime” on behalf of the Academics for Peace initiative protesting state violence against the Kurdish population in southeast Turkey. With the participation of more signatories, the number of academics involved reached 2,212. This declaration led President Erdogan to demand that the Higher Education Council (YOK) take immediate action against these “pseudo intellectuals.” Followin

A Turkish academic on hunger strike for nearly nine months to protest her dismissal after last year’s failed coup has been released from jail. Nuriye Gulmen, 35, was sentenced to six years and three months in jail for being a member of the militant leftist DHKP-C group, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey. However, the court granted the emaciated professor a conditional release, and she was freed from the hospital where she was in custody on December 1. Turkish authorit

Veli Saçılık, a friend of the Turkish professor Nuriye Gülmen who started a hunger strike in order to protest her dismissal under state of emergency decree-laws issued after a failed coup in Turkey last year, stated that Gülmen is now just 37 kg (81 lbs). Saçılık said to Artı Gerçek online news that, “According to the information we received from the hospital authorities, bedsores have increased, and the injuries are not being healed . . . It seems that she will never be able

A judge in Tehran has ordered the death penalty for Iranian disaster-medicine researcher Ahmadreza Djalali, according to his wife, Vida Mehrannia, and diplomatic sources in Italy. The 45-year-old professor who taught at the European Master in Disaster Medicine (EMDM) in Italy—a joint Master’s program of the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel—was arrested in April 2016 on charges of “collaboration with a hostile government” while

Hearings resume this week in the case of seven Moroccan journalists accused of violating national security. The defendants allegedly attempted to compromise citizens’ loyalty to the government and tarnish Morocco’s image by raining citizen journalists to use a smartphone app. If convicted, they could face five years in prison. Among those appearing in court Wednesday is Maati Monjib, a professor of African studies and political history at the University of Rabat. Monjib is Pr

Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist imprisoned in Iran for more than a year, has been released along with three other dual-nationality prisoners as Tehran prepares to implement a historic nuclear agreement with Western leaders. The move is believed to be part of a prisoner swap with the US. The closed-door trial of Rezaian began in May when he appeared before a hardline judge on charges of espionage, collecting confidential information, and spreading propaganda agai