Four academics arrested for signing a peace petition that infuriated the Turkish government for calling for an end to operations in Southeast Anatolia are released but will still stand trial for insulting the state following a day of hearings that touched off a ‘Festival of Justice’ outside an Istanbul courthouse

Four Turkish academics that were charged with “making terrorist propaganda” for signing a peace petition were released by an Istanbul court on 22 April, but their case will continue after the prosecutor moved to alter his accusation to the crime of insulting Turkishness.

Esra Mungan, Meral Camcı, Kıvanç Ersoy and Muzaffer Kaya were facing upward of seven years in jail for reading a statement on 10 March in which they said “We won’t be part of this crime” ahead of the release of a petition with 1,128 signatures from domestic and foreign academics exhorting the Turkish government to cease its deadly operations in Southeast Anatolia.

The four were released from Istanbul’s Çağlayan Courthouse late 22 April after prosecutor İrfan Fidan recommended they be freed pending permission from the Justice Ministry to try the four under Article 301, which addresses crimes insulting Turkishness or the institutions of the state. The article was the same under which Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was tried before he was assassinated by an ultranationalist in 2007.

The next hearing in the case will be 27 September.

The fact that the prosecutor changed his mind about the crime in question necessitated the full acquittal of the defendants, lawyers for the quartet said.

“You can’t invent law according to the situation at hand,” said lawyer Ceren Uysal. “Prosecutor Fidan has attempted to generate a crime in a deliberate and planned fashion, producing an indictment out of this petition. What the prosecutor is trying to do is act in line with the political atmosphere.

Throughout the hearing, large numbers of people offered support to the four with a “Festival of Justice” outside the courthouse, with some shouting, “This is only the beginning, the struggle continues,” a popular slogan from the Gezi Resistance in 2013.

Before the court’s decision, many shouted for an acquittal, not the quartet’s mere release.

“We are at the academics’ hearing. The same groundless allegations,” tweeted Can Dündar, editor-in-chief of the daily Cumhuriyet, who appeared at a hearing in the same courthouse earlier in the day to defend himself over lifting the lid on how the Turkish government has sent weapons to suspected jihadists in Syria.

“Today, we’re here for the future of our children,” said Sami Elvan, the son of murdered Gezi victim Berkin Elvan, ahead of the hearing. “We’re here to shine a light. I hope our professors are given their freedom.”

Academics note absurdity of indictment

All four highlighted the severe shortcomings in Fidan’s indictment during their time on the stand.

“Using his imagination, the prosecutor says we’ve been hindering the work of the security forces. No, we’re hindering the work of scientific forces. In the course of his work, the prosecutor has created heroes out of us. Outside, supporters are standing guard, saying ‘We are Esra’s doves’ and ‘We are Kıvanç’s equations.’ No one wants to shout, ‘We are İrfan Fidan’s accusations,’ do they?” said Ersoy of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

“Academics are independent individuals; no one can force someone to sign something or remove their signature. There’s no such crime as ‘challenging the state.’ A citizen can criticize political authority,” he said, noting that he had no regrets. “If it were to happen again, and I knew what would happen, I would again sign the petition and read out the 10 March statement. Defending peace is a right – and a duty.”

Ersoy, who had been held in solitary confinement after her arrest, further said the prosecution’s suggestions that he was a “flight risk” were an insult. “We wanted to cultivate hope for a democratic Turkey. We are not traitors, we are Turkey.”

“Even though we went to give a statement of our own free volition, we were arrested,” said Mungan, a psychology professor at Boğaziçi University. “We don’t see anything in the indictment; how can someone be arrested for an indictment like this? At the end of the indictment, there are the accusations, but they’re not based on anything. The goal in arresting was to silence everyone, but it’s had the opposite effect with people’s support for us. Since we were arrested, the number of people supporting us has grown,” she said.

“We addressed the state because it was our only legal counterpart. We called the state back to sit at the table that it overturned. The petition is not a challenge to the state but discusses rights. Despite all the pressures in this country, around 2,000 academics have found common ground on this point. We are continuing the tradition of Sartre as well as the intellectuals that did not obey Nazi Germany. [The petition] is an urgent call on the state to engage in policies focused on peace,” she said.

Indictment from Wikipedia

Also on the stand was Kaya, one of six academics from Nişantaşı University was fired by the school for signing the letter.

Kaya said he would not have even given a 2 out of 100 if he had been asked to grade the indictment as a professor. “The prosecutor’s office prepared the indictment with incorrect information from Wikipedia. The prosecutor has to use more serious sources than Wikipedia.”

Kaya also noted that the peace letter signed by the academics was devoid of any terrorist propaganda. “You can get angry at us for the letter and you might not like us, but there is absolutely no terror propaganda in the letter. We’re being tried not for what we said, but for what we didn’t say. Legally, this isn’t possible, period.”

Kaya also emphasized that the petition did not support self-autonomy but basic human rights. “The indictment has attempted to criminalize things that are not crimes, such as molding public opinion. There’s no such crime as ‘preparing the ground for the sending of U.N. observers.’”

“Because I signed the petition, I was fired from my job; because I made a statement, I was thrown in jail. Because we criticized the government and demanded peace, we were arrested,” Kaya said.

Camcı, who was fired from Yeni Yüzyıl University’s English Translation Department for signing the petition, declared both texts in question to be her defense while adding that it was not a crime to stand shoulder to shoulder with those that are oppressed or alienated.

Universities are not places to repeat government rhetoric like parrots, Camcı said, while reiterating that it was not a crime to demand peace.

‘Refuse to remain silent’

In the original petition, the academics accused the Turkish state of gross human rights violations in Southeast Anatolia against local Kurdish populations.

“We, as academics and researchers working on and/or in Turkey, declare that we will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent and demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state. We will continue advocacy with political parties, the parliament, and international public opinion until our demands are met,” they said.

The petition, which included notable international signatories like Noam Chomsky, David Harvey and Immanuel Wallerstein, incensed the Palace of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who called them traitors. Universities around the country, meanwhile, moved to terminate the employment of academics who signed the petition, although the heavy-handed actions only encouraged more academics and members of other vocations to sign the draft.

Sendika.Org