Thirty-two Turkish academics who signed a peace petition were called before a criminal court on Friday, where the prosecutor demanded the court to give them prison sentences up to seven-and-a-half years, Turkish news site Bianet reported.
In January 2016 1,128 Turkish academics calling themselves “Academics for Peace” signed a petition entitled “We will not be party to this crime,” during a period of heavy fighting in Turkey’s southeast between Turkish armed forces and militants associated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The number of signatories later exceeds 2,000.
The peace petition demanded a peaceful solution and criticized the Turkish security forces for a heavy-handed response that saw citizens confined under longstanding curfews and urban areas in predominantly Kurdish cities which were under bombardment.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused the signatories of making propaganda for the PKK. Many of the academics who signed the petition have been removed from their posts at the universities, and 48 had hearings on Friday. Three signatories were handed suspended jail sentences last February.
Meanwhile, a Turkish court sentenced Levent Tüzel, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) former deputy and Central Executive Board member of the country’s leftist Labor Party (EMEP), to one year and three months in jail for his participation in Nevruz celebrations, according to a report by online news outlet Diken.
Tüzel was on trial for opposing the ”Law on Demonstrations and Public Meetings,’’ during a Kurdish new year festival in 2012, Diken said.
The EMEP headquarters responded to Tüzel’s jail sentence with the following statement: “This decision is a clear violation of the right to conducting politics, freedom of thought and expression while diverging from the decisions of Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). We will continue our legal and political struggle against this decision.’’
The Turkish government revoked Tüzel’s passport following the controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016, as part of a crackdown on opposition voices. The EMEP board member is on record for ejecting an invitation to participate in an interim election government in 2015, set up by then-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.
