civicplays

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On January 11, 2016, over 500 Turkish academics signed and published a petition titled 'We will not be a party to this crime,' calling on the Turkish government to end military …

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summary
On January 11, 2016, over 500 Turkish academics signed and published a petition titled 'We will not be a party to this crime,' calling on the Turkish government to end military operations in the Kurdish southeast. President Erdoğan publicly denounced the signatories as 'dark and ignorant,' 'traitors,' and 'terrorist propagandists.' Criminal investigations were opened against signatories under Article 7/2 of the Anti-Terror Law. Signatories were dismissed from their university positions by emergency decree, had their passports revoked, and faced criminal prosecutions that extended through years of court proceedings. By 2019 the petition had gained over 2,000 signatories; nearly all faced some form of official retaliation.
country
Turkey
date text
2016-01-11
entities
sources
  • citation
    Scholars at Risk, 'Free to Think 2016' report; Human Rights Watch, 'Academics Prosecuted for Signing Petition,' March 2018; Amnesty International Turkey 2017 Annual Report; Reuters reporting January 2016
tactics
narratives
campaign ids
campaign phase
Administrative Enforcement
channels
  • Presidential Statements, Criminal Prosecution, University Dismissals, Passport Revocation
civic response
International academic solidarity campaigns; Scholars at Risk network provided emergency fellowships; German and European universities offered positions to dismissed academics; signatories continued advocacy despite personal risk
consequence category
Academic Purge / Criminalization of Dissent
created at
2026-09-24T17:50:55.358311+00:00
date precision
day
escalation
5
harm track
Both
id
TUR-008
institutional consequence
Hundreds of academics dismissed from positions; criminal proceedings against over 500 individuals; passports revoked preventing international travel and conference participation; Turkish Constitutional Court eventually ruled prosecutions unconstitutional in 2019 but damage was sustained
notes
The Academics for Peace prosecutions demonstrated that civil society suppression extended explicitly to the academic sector and that the emergency decree framework was deployed against actors with no connection to the alleged Gülenist coup. The Constitutional Court's 2019 ruling that prosecutions were unconstitutional was not followed by meaningful remedy for most affected academics. | Additional tactic: TC-43
occurred on
2016-01-11
trigger type
Academic petition criticizing government military operations
updated at
2026-09-24T17:50:55.358311+00:00
version
1

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