This initiative has three main aims. First, as social movement scholars, reclaiming the justice for our colleagues is a duty. We will diffuse information about repressions and threats on social scientists and social movement scholars in particular and will issue calls and statements to denounce repression. Secondly, this initiative will promote research able to provide a better understanding of the local, national and international forces and mechanisms that have produced a world in which social scientists have become targets of repression. Finally, being aware of the importance of collective actions and mobilizations, we hope this initiative contributes to a more active, efficient and visible mobilization of the academic community.

For now, we have three concrete suggestions to move forward:

1. We would like to organize panels and sessions on this topic during the conferences organized/co-organized by RC 47 and for the XIXI ISA World Congress of Sociology in Toronto;
2. We will dedicate a specific section on our website and the newsletter to this initiative;
3. Depending on the urgency of the case and the potential efficacy of our act we would publish statements and sign petitions in support of our colleagues. We plan to do this in collaboration with ISA committee on Human Rights.

This initiative can only be successful as a collective project. Therefore, we would like to invite you to send us any proposals you have in mind with regard to organization of panels and sessions. Moreover, we need your collaboration to be able to receive timely news on multiple forms of repression on academics you witness or are aware of in your surrounding e.g. your universities, cities and countries. Only in this way we could publicize the news in an effective way. We also would like to invite you to write short pieces of about 300-400 words for the newsletter. Eventually these panels, sessions and short articles could come together and make an interesting series for Open Movements. Finally, if you have any suggestions which could contribute to this initiative in any way, please let us know.

In the days following the press conference, signatories from 89 universities across Turkey faced accusations such as “supporters of terror”, “traitors”, “straw or copy intellectuals” in public statements made personally by the president and other government bodies, such as the Council of Higher Education (CoHE), the Inter-university Council, and by the presidents of various universities. In different cities campaigns against academics were held. Some universities initiated  interrogation processes on individual academics which led to different acts such as  firing and ban on entering the university campuses.  In several cases individual academics were called to the local police or the  prosecutor’s office to give their statement as to why they had signed the declaration.

After the July 15 (2016) coup attempt in Turkey, Turkish state and government have purged thousands of academics and deans from office. Academics for Peace (Barış İçin Akademisyenler) have also been victims of this. In a crackdown that rapidly spread across civil and military services, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the closure of thousands of private schools and many universities. In the last Statutory Decree which was issued on October 29, 2016, 1267 academics have been dismissed.

So far, at the international level, there have been important solidarity initiatives taken by our European colleagues in Paris, in Berlin and in Geneva. A European Committee for Solidarity with Academics for Peace and a fund to support dismissed academics are in the way of constitution. Meanwhile, since the beginning of dismissals, a solidarity fund is created in Turkey by Academics for Peace, by those who have not lost their jobs yet. For updated information on Academics for Peace see https://barisicinakademisyenler.com/english.

(Note: the original Academics for Peace website which was accessible under https://barisicinakademisyenler.net/  until late October 2016 and which was hosted by the Turkish provider turhost, appears to be offline. The new website appears to be hosted in Germany.)