Joint Letter by Global Higher Education Networks in Support of Turkey's Higher Education and Research Community

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Jan 23, 2016 Turkey
Joint Letter by Global Higher Education Networks in Support of Turkey's Higher Education and Research Community

Joint Letter by Global Higher Education Networks in Support of Turkey's Higher Education and Research Community

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued by Scholars at Risk on 21 January 2016 to publicize the joint letter endorsed by 20 higher education networks and associations regarding concerns over widespread pressures on members of Turkey`s higher education and research community.]

Press Release: Global Higher Education Networks Stand with Turkish Scholars

New York, January 21, 2016 – This afternoon, a coalition of 20 higher education networks and associations from around the world have issued a joint public letter expressing grave concern over recent reports of widespread pressures on members of Turkey’s higher education and research community.

The letter responds to reports that Turkish federal prosecutors have placed under investigation approximately 1,128 scholars,  in apparent retaliation for their co-signing a public petition urging Turkish authorities to renew dialogue with factions in the southeastern area of the country. The letter notes that some of the scholars have already been investigated for and/or charged with criminal offenses including spreading “terrorist propaganda,” “inciting people to hatred, violence and breaking the law,” and “insulting Turkish institutions and the Turkish Republic.” Dozens of scholars have reportedly already been detained and interrogated, and suspended or forced to resign from their positions at Turkish higher education institutions.

“Actions reportedly taken against these scholars raise serious concerns not only for [the scholars’] professional and personal well-being, but for the overall well-being of the Turkish higher education and research community, and for the ability of intellectuals and institutions in Turkey to undertake world-class scholarship,” the letter states.
 
The signatory organizations, including Scholars at Risk, call on Turkish authorities to intervene before any further harm is done to the scholars, their institutions, and to the reputation of Turkey’s higher education and research sector.

“All of our organizations work with institutions and individuals from or within Turkey,” said Robert Quinn, Executive Director of Scholars at Risk.  “We deeply value these mutually beneficial ties, and therefore felt it was important to show clear international solidarity with colleagues in the Turkish higher education and research sector in the face of this unprecedented threat.” 

The signatories hope that the letter will encourage Turkish officials to end any pending legal, administrative or professional actions undertaken against the scholars concerned and to renew publicly their commitment to internationally recognized principles of academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association.

For additional information, please contact Daniel Munier by email or phone at +1 212-992-9933.

***

To: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , President of the Republic of Turkey

January 21, 2016

Re: Concern for Turkish scholars & universities

Your Excellency:

We are a coalition of organizations concerned with promoting high quality higher education and research collaboration. We include within our members and partners many institutions and individuals from or within Turkey, and we deeply value our collective and mutually beneficial history of working with the Turkish higher education and research sector.

We are therefore dismayed to have to write now and express our grave concern about recent reports of widespread pressures on members of the Turkish higher education and research community, including investigations, arrests, interrogations, suspensions and termination of positions, in apparent violation of internationally recognized principles of academic freedom, free expression and freedom of association; principles on which quality higher education and research depend.

Specifically, we understand that Turkish federal prosecutors have placed approximately 1,128 professors and researchers at 89 Turkish institutions under investigation, apparently for their having co-signed a public statement urging Turkish authorities to renew dialogue efforts with factions in the southeastern area of the country. We understand that some of the signatories have already been investigated for and/or charged with criminal offenses including spreading “terrorist propaganda,” “inciting people to hatred, violence and breaking the law,” and “insulting Turkish institutions and the Turkish Republic,” and that dozens of scholars have been taken into custody, detained and interrogated. We have also received reports that a number of scholars have already been terminated, suspended or forced to resign from their positions within Turkish universities.

We would welcome any additional or contrary information you might share that will help us to understand the situation more fully. Absent this, the facts as described suggest a serious and widespread effort to retaliate against scholars for the nonviolent, public expression of their views on matters of professional and public concern – conduct expressly protected by internationally recognized standards of academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association as articulated in, among others, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Turkey is a signatory.

Absent any clearly legitimate, publicly expressed grounds for doing so—which frankly we find difficult to imagine—the legal, administrative and professional actions reportedly taken against these scholars raise serious concerns not only for their professional and personal well-being, but for the overall well-being of the Turkish higher education and research community, and for the ability of intellectuals and institutions in Turkey to undertake world-class scholarship. We find this suggestion deeply distressing given the important role that Turkey, Turkish universities and Turkish scholars have historically played and that we hope they will continue to play in the development and international exchange of knowledge in the 21st century.

We therefore implore you to intervene in these matters before any further harm is done to the scholars, their institutions, and to the reputation of Turkey’s higher education and research sector, including by:

• publicly reaffirming Turkey’s commitment to the essential values of higher education and research, including academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association;

• ensuring due protection for the well-being of the scholars concerned and for the principles of academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association;

• directing, through all appropriate means available to your office, responsible authorities or officials to cease and dismiss any investigations, prosecutions, detentions, or legal, administrative or professional actions undertaken against the scholars concerned which are based on their nonviolent expression of views on matters of professional and public concern;

• undertaking to ensure the timely release and reinstatement of any scholars who have been detained, terminated, suspended, forced to resign their positions or otherwise disadvantaged as a result of such actions; and

• until such time as these steps can be effectuated, to ensure that any proceedings against the scholars concerned proceed in a manner consistent with Turkey’s obligations under domestic and international law, including internationally recognized standards of due process, fair trial, academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association, and to ensure the scholars’ well-being and access to counsel and family while in custody.

We appreciate your most urgent attention to this matter and look forward to your earliest reply to Robert Quinn at scholarsatrisk@nyu.edu on behalf of the signatories.

Sincerely,

The undersigned organizations

Endorsing organizations:

Academic Cooperation Association

American Political Science Association

Association of International Education Administrators

Canadian Association of University Teachers

Committee of Concerned Scientists

Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland

European Association for International Education

European University Association

Foundation for Refugee Students

German Rectors’ Conference

International Council for Science’s Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the conduct of Science

Magna Charta Observatory

Mexican Association of International Education

Middle East Studies Association

National Tertiary Education Union, Australia

Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Scholars at Risk Network

Scholars at Risk Norway Section

The New Zealand Tertiary Education Union Te Hautu Kahurangi o Aotearoa Incorporated
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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