The new Turkey
Turkish academic sentenced to one year
in jail for signing peace petition

15-mar-19

22 October 2018:

Professor Gülengül Altıntaş, one of more than 1000 signatories of the group Academics for Peace, who signed a petition asking the government to discontinue the heavy-handed way they were dealing with the Kurdish citizens, was sentenced to one year and three months in jail, Turkish left-wing sendika.org website reported.

The court rejected the request by the İstanbul University professor's lawyer Ali Soydan for increased time, giving Altınaş a suspended sentence for conducting terrorist propaganda, the site said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been an outspoken critic of the peace petititon’s signatories, labelling them as equivalent to terrorists for their signatures on the Turkish Armed Forces’ campaign against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country, particularly what they said were heavy-handed tactics in cities, including the use of heavy weaponry, and called for an end to state violence against Kurdish citizens .

The petition arrived on the heels of the collapse of a two-and-a-half year ceasefire between the state and the PKK, negotiated by Erdoğan’s government, in July 2015 after his party failed to win a majority in general elections.

Following the sentencing, Altıntaş thanked her legal team, saying ‘’The decision [the court would make] was apparent from the very beginning; however, the solidarity of my lawyer and all the other lawyers has turned this into a hopeful, resistant endeavour.’’