MLA Statement on Continuing Threats to Academic Freedom and Higher Education in Turkey
The Executive Council approved the following statement in June 2019. In February 2021, it approved an update to the statement.
The Modern Language Association condemns the Turkish government’s persecution of Turkish academics who have signed a petition for peace calling on the government to resume diplomatic negotiations with the Kurds. Signatories have been accused of engaging in propaganda for terrorism and of complicity with a violent adversary. Many have lost their positions, been forced into exile, detained, and imprisoned. The petition was signed by more than 2,200 Turkish academics. As of 28 May 2019, 726 signatories have been put on trial in Turkey. At this time 192 sentences have been issued. Out of these sentences, 153 were suspended sentences with warnings, and four judgments were deferred. The remaining thirty-five sentences included convictions that entail prison sentences ranging between fifteen and thirty-six months.
We maintain that the injustice of this situation lies not in the actions of the petitioners for peace but in the retaliation they now suffer for having exercised their freedom of expression in petitioning their government, conduct expressly protected under international human rights agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, to which Turkey is signatory. Such punitive treatment of political expression has a profoundly chilling effect on academic freedom, undermining the democratic ideals of society and representing a grave threat to higher education on an international scale. Some petitioners who were tried and forced into exile were accused of aiding the enemy simply by virtue of having advised research on Kurdish history, a prerogative of academic freedom flagrantly denied by the state.
The MLA stands in solidarity with our Turkish colleagues, both those who have been accused and tried and those who live in fear of that possibility. The MLA demands the immediate dismissal of their cases. State action against academic freedom and nonviolent political expression undermines the ideal of the university as a space for free and critical thought and sets a dangerous precedent for the erosion of democratic rights. This persecution cannot go uncontested by professional academic organizations throughout the world.