Dayanışma / Solidarity

Following the ongoing prosecution of academics in Turkey, whose only crime is to wish for a future without violence, we sent a letter to the Turkish Ambassador in Israel, The Turkish Ministries of Justice and Education and to other institutions demanding an end to the judicial harassment against the members of Barış İçin Akademisyenler / Academics for Peace (full letter in comments).

Anthropologists in Taiwan are deeply concerned with the recent prosecution and sentencing of our Turkish colleague Dr. Ayşe Gül Altınay, a professor at Sabancı University.Dr. Ayşe Gül Altınay, one of the scholars who signed a petition three years ago that called for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict, was recently sentenced to 25 months in prison by the Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court. Dr. Altınay is a world-renowned anthropologist who has a Ph. D. from Duke University and expertise in the fields of militarism, feminism, and non-violent activism.

El pasado viernes recibimos, con gran conmoción y angustia, la noticia de que nuestra compañera de la Universidad de Sabanci (Turquía), Ayse Gül Altinay, había sido condenada a 25 meses de prisión por "apoyar voluntariamente y con conocimiento de causa a una organización terrorista como no miembro". El caso de Ayse no es aislado. Es una de las más de 1.200 Academics for Peace que hace tres años firmó una declaración en la que pedía que se pusiera fin a la violenta persecución llevada a cabo por el estado a la ciudadanía kurda.

Ayşe Gül Altınay, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Center at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, is set to give a keynote at the summer school organized by the Mnemonics network in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in September 2019.

The American Mathematical Society’s Committee on Human Rights of Mathematicians has recently voiced objections to the political prosecution of the Turkish mathematicians Betul Tanbay and Ayse Berkman, who are among the thousands of signatories of the petition protesting military action taken by the Turkish military against Kurdish provinces. Signatories of this petition, including mathematicians and other scholars, have been threatened with the loss of the right to travel and their positions. Recent news indicates that the situation in Turkey is worsening.

Ayşe Gül Altınay, Turkish gender studies scholar and one of the EJWS associate editors, has been sentenced to 25 months prison for signing a petition calling for peaceful resolution of conflict between Turkish state and Kurdish minority. She is one of over thousand academics currently facing the same assault by Turkish authorities.

In solidarity with Ayşe and others in the same situation,  we publish here information about the processes, as well as Ayşe's statements during the hearings in December 2018 and May 2019.

The Executive Committee of the Academic Council at Duke University expresses its deep concern about the prison sentence issued in Turkey to Dr. Ayşe Gül Altinay. An internationally-renowned professor at Sabanci University, Dr. Altinay received her doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from Duke in 2001.

On May 23 Professor Ayşe Gül Altınay, Sabanci University in Istanbul, was sentenced to 25 months in prison for “willingly and knowingly supporting a terrorist organization as a non-member”. She is one of the 700 academics who have been or are still on trial for signing the statement “We will not be a party to this crime” in response to the intensification of warfare in South Eastern Turkey and called for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict.

It is with great shock and distress that we hear of our colleague from the University of Sabanci, Ayse Gül Altinay’s sentencing to 25 months in prison for ‘willingly and knowingly supporting a terrorist organisation as a non-member’.