Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., 2010.Toby Jorrin/Press Association.All rights reserved. As the Turkish government continues to arrest
academics across the country, with little to no judicial oversight, Turkish
academia finds itself cast back into the murky uncertainty of the 1980s, and
the subsequent censorship and disappearances.
Just this week, another 74 academics were arrested
under the auspices of being affiliated to Fetullah Gülen, the self-exiled
cleric currently accused of masterminding a failed coup against the Erdogan’s
government.
Yet the wave of arrests precedes the recent coup
attempt. The Government is settling political scores, and is spreading fear
throughout its universities. The country is currently undergoing the beginnings
of a cultural revolution, and Turkey’s institutions of higher education are
among those to be most ruthlessly purged. If we truly believe that the fight
for academic freedom is global, then we cannot afford to look the other way.
Turkey’s academic freedom, and our own belief in international academic
solidarity, is at stake.
IPSA
boycott, solidarity or disharmony?
A good place to demonstrate solidarity would have been
the International Political Science Association’s (IPSA) annual world
conference, which was set to take place in Istanbul this summer. Yet the abrupt
decision by the organizing committee, several months preceding the coup, to
withdraw its event from the host city Istanbul, came as a blow. The move was
widely interpreted as a failure to stand by Turkish academics, who were already
facing a witch-hunt following the government’s explicit targeting of the ‘Academics
for Peace Initiative’, a group that had signed a petition critical of
Turkey’s foreign policy.
Adding a bitter note of irony to the IPSA withdrawal
was that this year’s conference theme was to be ‘Politics in a World of
Inequality’. Yet faced with the deteriorating situation in Turkey, the
conference organizers cited ‘security concerns’ and relocated the event to
Poznan, Poland. The decision was met with disappointment by those academics who
had hoped it would represent a much-needed show of solidarity. Indeed, for many
Turkey researchers, including myself, the decision to move the conference
effectively terminated our plans for panels, networking, and publishing
opportunities. More importantly, it meant that we would not be seeing our
friends and colleagues in Turkey, and would not have the opportunity to work as
closely together as we had anticipated, at least not under the mantle of the
IPSA.
Following the IPSA’s formal decision to relocate, the
Academics for Peace group therefore announced a boycott. It was adhered to by
several hundred academics across the world, and as a result many panels were
aborted and trips cancelled. When I emailed them for further information, they
sent me a communal reply. Clearly, they were not simply stating the obvious,
that the Turkish Government has always had academia in its sights, and now in
its crosshairs.
Instead, their critique was also aimed at academia at
large, and the trappings of the academic ‘industry’ mentality that requires
academics to both promote and carefully guard their careers. In a follow-up
email they wrote to me that, “The modern academic machinery resembles
assembly-line work”, and warned that the IPSA’s lack of support for Turkish
academics would set a precedent that “will likely repeat itself for scholars in
other countries in the future”.
The group’s criticism is an urgent one, and deserving
of closer consideration. On the face of it, the crackdown on academics in
Turkey is but a small part of a much larger picture of widespread crackdowns
and indeed a wholesale assault on civil liberties in the country. Yet what
stands out in Turkey is that academics there can no longer subside with the
idea of a comfortably isolated ethics of detachment. For us, it is now more
important than ever to reach out, rather than look elsewhere. To do otherwise
sends a message to Turkish academics that we care more about our institutions
and conferences than the plight of our colleagues. Yet where would these
institutions be without international solidarity? Boycott or not, the crackdown
on Turkish academia is not just an inconvenient truth: it is the beginnings of
a cultural revolution. For the hundreds of Turkish (doctoral) students, professors,
and staff, working at universities here in the UK, it matters greatly how we
choose to respond to Turkey.
On a more optimistic note, the Academics for Peace
initiative also plans to host its own conference. And many of those who decided
not to attend the IPSA conference –myself included – are currently engaged in
organizing other events. In many ways, the recent events have brought us closer
together, and there is more opportunity and momentum for cooperation than ever
before. This is the time when our solidarity counts the most. More importantly,
it is a time when a failure to respond would count strongest against us, after
a decade of discussing the meaning of ‘impact’.
Institutions
are key
Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of the
twentieth century, once urged us to strengthen our institutions against
totalitarianism lest they become irrelevant: ‘Institutions are like fortresses.
They must be well designed and properly
manned’, he warned. Following the recent wave of arrests and dismissals across
Turkish institutions, including universities, Popper’s warning rings more
urgently true than ever. Already, the Turkish Government has accused
universities of enjoying a ‘historic’ affiliation with the military, and has
announced the suspension of all
university deans, and thousands more academics across the country. With a
travel ban in place, Turkish academics are now trapped inside their own
country.
As academics we cannot pretend that these arrests are
legitimate measures. Given that the wave of arrests started well before the
coup, in response to the ‘Academics for Peace’ initiative, the coup is clearly
providing a convenient excuse to settle scores among an internationally
oriented intelligentsia.
Such anti-intellectual sentiments exist elsewhere, for
example in the UK and the US. Recall the Iraq war, when academics were accused
of supporting terrorists, and the more recent Brexit vote in the UK, widely
interpreted as a rebuttal to pro-European sympathies among well-educated
voters. Add to this growing accusations that universities are supposed hives of
radicalization, or conversely, that they resemble liberal ‘trigger
warning’-enamoured slumber zones of the privileged few, and it seems that now the
fight for academic freedom is a global one. Events in Turkey should not be seen
as an isolated case. Universities across
the world are increasingly being vilified, isolated, and blamed for the
failures of the state. An attack on Turkish academics is an attack on all of
us.
The French poet Mallarmé once wrote that ‘poems are
made with words, not thoughts’. And in this case, our well-intended solidarity
is not enough. We must also pool our resources to communicate, publish, and
keep strengthening the academic freedoms that allow such cooperation in the
first place. Whether one agrees with the boycott or not, it is undeniable that
the Academics for Peace movement represents one of the most influential groups
in the current struggle for the future of Turkish academia. We must keep in
mind that as academics we are at our best, not when we agree to disagree, but
exactly when we disagree to agree.
So what can academics do outside of Turkey? First of
all, we would do well to keep in mind that academia’s strength lies in its
willingness to engage in debate, to observe and discuss societal issues from a
multitude of angles. Academia may be at its most vibrant exactly when we don’t
agree on how to act. This, more than anything is what should differentiate a
conference such as the IPSA’s from other political events. There is no party line in academia, other
than to attempt to speak truth to power.
After fighting for decades to be taken seriously
within the international academic community, with many Turkish professors now
boasting degrees and doctorates from the world’s most prestigious universities,
we cannot afford to abandon the idea of cultivating and encouraging academic exchange
in Turkey. Relocating conferences and terminating grants sends the message that
academia in Turkey is a lost cause. For anyone who has spent any time at all at
Turkish universities, it should be clear there is much to be optimistic about.
We would be foolish not to take Turkish academia seriously.
Taking
a stand for Turkish academia
As academics we cannot succumb to isolationist or
escapist thinking, even when this seems to be the societal trend. And even
though academia has the unusual tendency to encourage self-criticism, while
seeking to emulate the public relations techniques of the corporate world, we
cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that the international community of
academia can be silent and relevant at the same time.
The capacity to voice dissent and to do so freely is
not a luxury that one should enjoy in private. It requires solidarity, constant
repetition, and in the case of Turkey, heightened urgency.
We are more interconnected than ever before and we
need to use this to our advantage. To abandon the plight of Turkish academics,
and of Turkish academia, under the guise of security concerns or other
technical excuses, is to diminish our field into becoming a mere purveyor of
talking heads and ‘expert’ opinions.
In order to stand with Turkey we also need to think
about what Turkey means to us. It needs to be more than a holiday destination
for foreign students. It needs to be more than an exotic-sounding partner for
funding opportunities. And it needs to be more than just a collection of elites
trained at European and American places of higher learning.
But for this to take shape requires first of all a
vibrant and free academic environment, one in which teaching is emphasized,
grants are awarded without corruption, and students and staff can speak out as
they please, without fearing recriminations from the authorities, let alone
their fellow students.
Most of all, it means that we cannot afford to simply
dismiss Turkey as yet another lost cause, another failed state. If we do so, we
not only diminish our own claim to upholding and championing democracy, but we
forfeit our right and obligation to speak truth to power and, most importantly,
to assist others in doing so as well. The beauty of international academic
solidarity is that it does not rely upon a humanitarian intervention to do any
these things. It grows them from the ground up, and what a waste it would be to
allow Erdogan’s government to uproot the excellent seeds that have been sown.
