"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.

Our colleague Ayse Gül Altinay, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Center at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, was sentenced to 25 months in prison earlier this week. She is one of over 2200 Academics for Peace who three years ago signed a statement “We will not be a party to this crime” appealing for an end to violent state-sponsored persecution of Kurdish citizens of Turkey. The investigation in Istanbul has covered only the first 1200 signatories so far, but it might be extended to the second 1000 as well.