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TWENTY-SEVEN academics were jailed by Turkey today for having signed a 2016 declaration opposing violence against the country’s Kurdish citizens.
The “peace declaration” We Will Not Be Party to this Crime attacked the Turkish military’s behaviour in towns including Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre and Silopi, saying it had “attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilised in wartime.
“We will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent,” their statement read.
Academic Ozgur Muftuoglu told an Istanbul court: “I demanded the universal right of peace in accordance with the law. There exists no crime.”
But the signatories were tried for “making terrorist propaganda.”
Thirteen were sentenced to a year, 10 months and 15 days behind bars while the other 14 received longer 27-month sentences.
Judges gave a range of reasons for the harsher punishment including “the gravity of the defendants’ intention-based fault” and “the defendants’ positions.”
