[Fdu] Academics for Peace in Turkey: Building Solidarity through Standing Up for Truth

[Cynthia Wright]

Hello Everyone
Here is a good article about the sweeping repression and dismissals 
faced by Turkish academics within the context of political 
authoritarianism in that state. Apologies for x-postings.

Please check it out for the inspiring examples of solidarity (inside and 
outside Turkey) as well as the helpful list of things you can do. There 
are also links to informative websites.

Please also listen, if you haven't already, to this important segment 
from CBC The Current. It's about a Turkish academic who is now stateless 
in Canada. It is the third half-hour segment in the program that was 
aired this morning.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-22-2017-1.4034665

Thanks,
C

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1386 .... March 22, 2017
___________________________________________________


  Building Solidarity through Standing Up for Truth
  Academics for Peace in Turkey
  <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1386.php>


      Çağlar Dölek and Gülden Özcan

The fate of the neoliberal Islamist project of authoritarian restoration 
in Turkey will be determined by an upcoming referendum on April 16 of 
this year. The referendum will be held under the conditions of a state 
of emergency in effect since the July 15 coup attempt last year. The 
regime's use of the putsch attempt to suppress all forms of dissent has 
quickly evolved into an overriding choice to make the state of emergency 
the permanent form of governance in Turkey. In this sense, the April 16 
plebiscite on constitutional changes marks a defining stage in the 
politics of violent polarization and oppression under way for more than 
a decade whereby President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his cronies have 
increasingly paralyzed the social and political fabric of the country in 
their relentless pursuit of the project of a one-man rule.

The question on the ballot is nothing less than a version of 
Führerprinzip, dubbed the “presidential system” in the managed and 
heavily censored mass media discourse in Turkey. A permanent Erdoğan 
presidency is offered as a panacea to the ruling classes to resolve the 
constitutional and economic gridlock of the neoliberal regime. However, 
as various polls are now signaling, the swaying of the public opinion 
toward #NO, the government is increasing the volume of suppression and 
making moves for a total closure of public deliberation about the real 
content of the regime change on the ballot. What is more (as vividly 
experienced in the recent crisis over the politics of the far right in 
Germany and the Netherlands), the ruling Justice and Development Party 
(Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) seems to be panicking about an upset 
in the referendum, and resorting once again to a vulgar politics of 
Turkish victimhood, this time vis-à-vis Europe.

The unfolding dynamics of political power and Erdoğan's claim to 
majoritarian rule makes the freefall and panic of the regime all the 
more apparent. While there is a populist push to establish one-man rule 
through a politics of political oppression from above and mob rule from 
below, the widening mobilization of a spectrum of opposition groups is 
forcing the regime to govern through statutory decrees which bypass 
constitutional and parliamentary checks and balances altogether. This is 
a systematic, if not novel, resort to measures that attempt to cage the 
socio-political fabric of Turkish society into a pro-capital, repressive 
and radical conservative settlement. The mass dismissals from different 
branches of the public sector are not only directed against the alleged 
coup plotters, they are also used as the key means of purging 
progressive, left-wing, and secular cadres from the public institutions. 
The case of Academics for Peace is one of the most notable examples 
demonstrating the political motives of the purges and the ideological 
content of the restoration project being pursued by the AKP.


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