The Centre for Gender Research stands in solidarity with Professor Ayşe Gül Altinay

On May 23 Ayşe Gül Altınay, Sabanci University in Istanbul, was sentenced to 25 months in prison for ”willingly and knowingly supporting a terrorist organisation as a non-member.” This is because she signed the statement “We will not be a party to this crime” in support of colleagues, democracy and academic freedom.

Central European University expresses solidarity with the highly regarded academic Ayse Gül Altinay, sentenced by the Turkish authorities to 25 months in prison for signing a peace petition. Such actions are always unacceptable, but especially so in a country that claims to respect freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Statement by Dr. Ayse Gül Altinay, May 21, 2019 (read out in court)

Ayse Gul Altinay, Sabanci University in Istanbul was yesterday sentenced to 25 months in prison for ‘willingly and knowingly supporting a terrorist organisation as a non-member’. This is because she signed the statement “We will not be a party to this crime” in support of colleagues, democracy and academic freedom. Ayse is a cultural anthropologist, Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Centre and editorial board member of the European Journal of Women’s Studies.

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.

"Are we going to turn our pain into more violence, hate, pain and injustice, or into steps that multiply life, beauty, love, peace and justice?"

Prof. Dr. Ayşe Gül Altınay, who has been working in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies and gender at Sabancı University, is one of the academics who have been charged with "propagandizing for a terrorist organization" for having signed the declaration entitled "We will not be a party to this crime" prepared by the Academics for Peace.

"In order to heal the traumas transmitted from one generation to the other, and to come out of the cycles of violence we have been suffering from, we need reparative justice more than ever."

On 21 May, the renowned Turkish Scholar Ayşe Gül Altınay was sentenced to two years and one month in prison for “aiding a terrorist organisation as a non-member”.

The Turkish government is prosecuting hundreds of academics who signed a petition by a group called "Academics for Peace" advocating a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict. It is part of the on-going crackdown on free expression and speech in the country. A beloved academic and renowned scholar, Ayse Gul Altinay, was last week sentenced to 25 months in prison by the Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court. Dr. Altinay is noted for her commitment to a peaceful future for her country shaped by nonviolence, democracy, and a commitment to human equality.

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.