Signing a petition in a democratic country should not land anyone in jail. Yet this is what is about to happen to political scientist Füsun Üstel.

Üstel, a professor who retired from Galatasaray University in Istanbul, was among the 2212 scholars to undergo trial for having signed the Academics for Peace Petition, a letter publicized in January 2016 that denounced the resumption by the Turkish state of violent repression against the Kurds. Since then, and especially since December 2017, a relentless series of trials has taken place, in which the Turkish State has prosecuted the signatories for ‘terrorist propaganda’. Half of the signatories have already been prosecuted. Until recently, the outcome of the trials was always the same: many academics were sentenced to jail, but with a suspension provision provided they refrained from committing further “crimes.” Üstel refused to accept such a provision as it could be seen as legitimating the indictment, and was consequently sentenced to 15 months in prison, a sentence that was confirmed after she lost her appeal on 25 February 2019. 

This is only one of the signs that repression is hardening. Gencay Gürsoy, a retired professor of medicine and longstanding human rights advocate, has just been sentenced to 27 months’ imprisonment. Since then, long sentences of up to 36 months have become more frequent, which also means that more academics will be jailed, as the suspension provision cannot apply to sentences longer than two years. Such a trend in the sentences is worrying. Until recently you could receive a suspended sentence for having signed the Peace petition. Today you face being jailed. 

We demand that the Turkish government and institutions respect the international conventions protecting human rights – including freedom of expression — which they have themselves ratified. We demand that the international community and European Union remind the Turkish authorities in the strongest terms about the vital importance of upholding such fundamental democratic principles.