Earlier this month, Turkey handed prison terms to eight professors and medical doctors that protested the massacres of Kurdish civilians during winter of 2015 and 2016.
The events that led to the massacre started in 2015 with the breakdown of peace negotiations between Turkish government and Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK. PKK had accused the government of siding with the Islamic State in the fight against Kurds in Syria and Iraq. This triggered Kurdish riots and a government response that escalated in the summer and fall of 2015.
In December 2015, Turkey conducted military operations in the country’s southeast. Attacks with the use of tanks and helicopters decimated Kurdish villages in the Sırnak province, killing hundreds of civilians and displacing thousands.
In January 2016, over one thousand academics, horrified by the news of mass casualties inflicted by the Turkish military on Turkish civilians, signed a petition titled, “We Will Not Be Party To This Crime.” Most of them have since been questioned by the police and terminated from their jobs. More than 500 have been indicted and charged with “propagandizing for a terrorist group.” Their passports have been revoked to prevent them from leaving the country. To date, 63 academics that signed the petition have been sentenced to prison terms. The rest are at various stages of serial trials, awaiting verdicts from judges that follow government orders.
Sentenced on Dec. 19 to 30 months in prison is a world renowned expert on forensic science and prevention of torture, Dr. Sebhem Korur Financi. She has been a chairperson of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Istanbul and is the current president of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation. She is known for her work for the United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal on autopsies of those exhumed from mass graves in Bosnia.
Another academic sentenced this month is a retired physics professor of Istanbul Technical University, Dr. Ayse Erzan, recipient of numerous science awards, including the L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science. Known for her participation in peace and women’s rights movements, she worked at various research centers, driven in and out of Turkey by the seesaw of the political situation. Her advocacy for human rights finally brought her a prison term in her retirement.
Dr. Azdemir Aktan, former president of the Turkish Medical Association and the Istanbul Medical Chamber shared a similar fate after working in medicine for 40 years. After signing the petition, he was removed from his faculty position in the Department of General Surgery of Marmara University by a government decree.
In January 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a plan of invading Afrin, the majority-Kurdish district in northern Syria. A number of Turkish academics and cultural leaders, some already on trial for signing the 2016 petition, wrote a letter to the Turkish Parliament asking its members to oppose the move. Erdogan called the signatories “traitors” and ordered a criminal investigation.
Few weeks later Turkish army invaded Afrin, causing humanitarian catastrophe in the district. According to the report by the United Nations, indiscriminate shelling of the city killed dozens of civilians. Over 100,000 people were forced to evacuate to the nearby camps.
Inside Turkey, hundreds of peace activists and journalists that protested the invasion had been detained.
After decimation of Afrin, the next move announced by Erdogan was the invasion of Manbij, the city in northern Syria with a large Kurdish population. Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, promised to fight the invasion to the last breath. U.S. commanders in the area also made it clear that they would not stay still if Turkish armed forces attacked U.S. allies. Turkey backed off and agreed to joint patrols around Manbij together with U.S. forces.
The withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Syria requested by President Erdogan and agreed to by President Trump on Dec. 19 changes the balance of forces in the area. The massacre of U.S. allies in northern Syria now appears imminent, and so does another avalanche of serial trials of peace activists inside Turkey.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and co-chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.
