According to a statement on the initiative’s website, the petition was signed by 2,212 academics in Turkey and 2,220 from abroad.
The Academics for Peace initiative has declared that its “We will not be a party to this crime” petition was closed at 10 p.m on January 20 having garnered a total of 4,432 signatories. The petition, which calls for an end to violence in Turkey’s Southeast and criticizes the Turkish government’s policies, was signed by more than 1,100 academics as of Jan. 10.
Those who had originally signed the petition were heavily criticized by politicians, including Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. After Erdoğan targeted the signatories and called them “colonialists” and “traitors,” prosecutors launched investigations against many of them. Some academic institutions even fired some of the signatories at the bequest of the Higher Education Board (YÖK).
According to a statement on the initiative’s website, the petition was signed by 2,212 academics in Turkey and 2,220 from abroad.
“The academics who expressed their wish for peace by signing this text and using their right to freedom of expression have been targeted, threatened and belittled for days,” the statement read, while also saying that the investigations into their actions and the detentions of some of the academics for signing the petition are unacceptable and unfair.
Reiterating their wish for peace, the statement read: “As Academics for Peace, we favor life and peace, not death and war. We demand from the state, of which we are citizens, the restoration of peace.”
Academic faces investigation for setting peace call exam question
Ankara University has launched an administrative investigation into Professor Gökçen Alpkaya because she set an exam question based on last week’s declaration for peace by 1,128 academics, the Radikal daily reported on Wednesday.
In the exam paper, Alpkaya asked how the declaration, which called for the ongoing curfews in Turkey’s Southeast to be lifted and for an end to military operations responsible for the loss of many civilian lives in the region, might be evaluated in the context of the principles of international law.
Ankara University released a written statement on Wednesday, which announced that an administrative investigation has been launched into Alpkaya regarding the question she asked students to answer in the exam paper.
Also, a news portal belonging to Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek’s son, Osman Gökçek, who is in the ranks of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), has published photos of academics who signed the recent declaration calling on the government to restore peace in the Southeast.
The news portal, www.beyazgazete.com, published photos of the academics under the headline, “Right here 1,200 academics.” Access to the web page (not the whole website) showing photos of the academics was banned on Thursday following a court ruling on the matter.
