In Brief On December 29, 2016, the renowned writer and linguist Necmiye Alpay was released from Bakirkoy prison in Istanbul, 120 days after she was arrested on alleged terror charges as a part of an ongoing investigation into the closed daily newspaper Özgür Gündem. Case History On August 31, 2016, Istanbul’s Eighth Criminal Judgeship of Peace ordered the arrest of Alpay on charges of “being a member of a terror organization” and “disrupting the unity of the state;” charges s

On November 16, 2018 Turkish authorities arrested 13 people, including two academics from Bogazici and Bilgi universities and a group of civil society representatives, for their alleged involvement in the organization and continuation of the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Professors Betül Tanbay, an Academic for Peach signatory from the Department of Mathematics at Boğaziçi University, and Turgut Tarhanlı, dean of the faculty of law at İstanbul Bilgi University, have been released

The trials of academics who have been charged with "propagandizing for a terrorist organization" after signing the Academics for Peace declaration "We will not be a party to this crime" continued in Istanbul Caglayan Courthouse on October 17. 48 academics had their hearings at five separate courts. At the 33rd Heavy Penal Court, the Prosecutor's Office announced its opinion as to the accusations for 27 academics, whose cases had been combined, and at the 37th Heavy Penal Cour

In February 2018 Serkan Golge, a NASA researcher who holds dual Turkish-American citizenship, was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison by Turkish authorities due to his alleged involvement in the attempted coup in July 2016, as well as to his links to the Gulen movement. Following the announcement of the verdict earlier this year, Golge had an appeal hearing on September 19, during which the Turkish Court of Appeals rejected Golge's release but reduced his senten

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

Since the 2016 public declaration of the Peace letter that demanded an end to the Turkish state's violence against its Kurdish population, Academics for Peace have faced several reactions from the state, the law, the universities at which they work, and the Higher Education Council, which currently functions directly under the Office of Presidency. According to a report prepared by the Academics for Peace, the number of Turkish academics who lost their job due to their associ

Serkan Golge, a NASA researcher and an American-Turkish dual citizen of Turkish descent, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by Turkish authorities based on allegations of involvement in the attempted coup in July 2016. He was arrested due to an anonymous tip while visiting family in Antakya in June 2016 and accused of spying for the CIA and being a member of the Gulen movement, which is considered a terrorist organization by Turkish authorities. The only eviden

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree stripping much of the country’s Council of Higher Education's (YOK) supervisory power, giving himself the sole authority to appoint university rectors. Under the state of emergency rule, Erdogan had dissolved the election procedures of rectors in institutions of higher education. According to the presidential decree issued after the end of two-year state of emergency, the requirement for university rectors to have previou

On July 8, 2018, the Turkish state issued the 10th statutory decree since the coup attempt in July 2016, which discharged another 18,632 civil servants from several state offices including ministries of Education, Internal Affairs, Justice, and Armed Forces. The dismissals included 199 academics, making it so that as of July 13, the number of academics who have lost their jobs reached to 6,081. The number of those who were reinstated, however, was only 174. 18 of 199 of the d

We are publishing the statement of defense of Özyeğin University professor Yasemin Gülsüm Acar, who was tried at the Istanbul 32nd Heavy Penal Court in Çağlayan for having signed the Academics for Peace declaration, entitled, "We will not be a party to this crime." Like my colleagues who have found themselves here in the last weeks and who will continue to come here in the coming months, I am here because I tried to use my academic identity to voice a need for peace. I'm an a

In January 2016, 2,218 scholars from Turkey signed a petition titled “We will not be a party to this crime,” also known as the Peace Petition. The signatories (Academics for Peace) have been subjected to heavy pressure and persecution. Hundreds of the Turkish academics have faced criminal and disciplinary investigations, custody, imprisonment, and violent threats. Several academics have been dismissed or suspended, and some were forced to resign or leave the country. Many sig

Henri J. Barkey, a Turkish professor of international relations at Lehigh University, will no longer board a flight that passes over the country where he was born, let alone land there, out of fear that he’ll be arrested. He doesn’t speak to anyone in Turkey because he’s worried they’ll face repercussions for associating with him. Mr. Barkey, who is also director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has taken those precautions si

Fears grow for two Turkish academics whose health is deteriorating after more than 60 days on hunger strike, PEN International said today. Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça went on hunger strike on March 8, 2017 in the country's capital, Ankara, demanding that their jobs be reinstated. Gülmen and Özakça are two of the 4,811 academics and 40,000 teachers who were dismissed by emergency decree following the coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Under the state of emergency, those dismi

The government-led witch hunt targeting the peaceful opposition in Turkey has cost two more academics their jobs. On March 27, 2017, Isik University (Istanbul) announced the dismissal of two of its faculty members: Sinan Birdal, assistant professor of international relations and Middle East studies, and Nese Yildiran, professor of humanities and art history. Reportedly, the university administration asked Yildiran and Birdal to remove their names from the Academics for Peace

Mehmet Fatih Traş, a research assistant at Çukurova University, committed suicide on Friday evening in his home after he was fired from his job. Traş was one of the signatories of a peace declaration that called on the government to halt operations by security forces in Southeastern Turkey, restore peace to the nation, and return to the negotiating table to restart shelved talks with the Kurds to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. The Adana branch of the Education

On January 6, 2017, the Turkish government issued three new emergency decrees that dismissed 8,390 civil servants from their positions in several state institutions, including the ministries of Health and Justice, the Office of Law Enforcement, the Armed Forces, and the Turkish Council of State. 649 academics, along with more than a hundred administrative staff members, lost their positions at several universities. 41 of the dismissed scholars were members of the Academics fo

Istanbul Police detained at least 103 academics at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul on Friday and Saturday as part of the ongoing crackdown in the wake of the failed coup attempt. Police also searched the academics’ homes and offices, and the suspects were taken to a hospital for routine health checks before being given over to the Istanbul police headquarters, as Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Some academics were said to have been users of a smartpho

Under a legislative decree published on Saturday, Turkish authorities fired more than 10,000 public servants for alleged ties to the movement affiliated with exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen and shut down 15 media outlets. The new decree "made it easier to sack public officials believed to be members of terrorist organizations or groups involved in activities against the country's national security," state-run news agency Anadolu reported. "The little formal autonomy we had at t

On November 12, 2016, Mehmed Özkan was directly appointed rector to Istanbul’s prestigious Bogazici University by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, marking the first such move after the president was given authority to directly appoint rectors following the latest state of emergency decree. Former rector Gülay Barbarosoğlu announced she will end her academic career. “I’m leaving the university that I’ve contributed to as a student, academic, and a director for 40 years. I’m als