Are you afraid that the Turkish government will harm you in some way?
‘In a place where an investigation is launched against more than a thousand academics who are just using their freedom of expression, where academics are fired, attacked, and threatened just because they signed a petition, there are always strong reasons to be afraid of being harmed by the government. If we just remember the last couple of days, on January 12, there was a dubious explosion in one of the most central and touristic squares in Istanbul - Sultanahmet - leaving more than ten people dead. In the afternoon, the president was on TV accusing more than a thousand academics, who signed this petition to end the state violence, of being ‘‘traitors’’. In minutes, the Institute of Higher Education declared they will also do ‘‘what is necessary’’.
Next day, pro-government newspapers wrote that there was a connection with the explosion and the petition, while a pro-government mafia leader declared they would be happy to take showers with the blood of the academics who signed the petition. The universities, cooperating with the government and its higher institute of education, declared one by one that they will investigate the signees, while some university rectors started prosecutions against their academics. The website of the Academics for Peace was hacked with notes such as: ‘‘We take over the website, you will not be forgiven anymore’’, ‘‘Your ears will blow up if we speak’’, ‘‘Our operations will go on’’, while a huge Turkish flag covered the page.
Two days ago, a high school teacher was threatened by the school board due to a FoucaultMichel Foucault was a 20th century French philosopher. quote she had in her WhatsApp status (‘‘Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prison?’’) Another teacher who openly supported the first one is assigned to another school, which provided a perfect performance of Foucault's words. And these are only the incidents in the last couple of days, mostly in the Western part of the country. Harming people is already a daily practice in the Kurdish provinces since decades, intensifying again in the last months.’
Do you think anything will change because of the petition?
‘Despite the severity of the legal and extralegal threats the signees got from the president himself, government members, mafia leaders, some students, universities, higher institutes of education and so on, the support for the academics grew everyday. The number of the signatures were doubled and the supporting petitions and solidarity messages have multiplied: students, international thinkers such as Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, Tariq Ali, writers, white-collar workers, artists, translators, psychologists, filmmakers, international universities.
The problems of state violence, economic, political, cultural and military oppression of the Kurdish people and oppositional groups in Turkey, as well as deepening economic inequality in the country and the dirty agreements made with Europe concerning the immigration issue are obviously too huge structural problems to be solved with a petition. Yet, this petition proves one more time that there are plenty of people who are willing to keep struggling and they are not alone. On the other hand, because of this petition, plenty of people will be unemployed and we might have empty universities to be filled by people who will not sign such petitions!’
Would you consider going to Turkey anytime soon and do you feel safer here in the Netherlands than you would have been anywhere else?
‘I will have to go to Turkey in the summer, if not before. We don’t have a clear idea about how the legal process will evolve yet. Plans can change according to the developments. I see this as a process we are experiencing collectively, thus, the personal feeling of security forms only a part of the story.’
