How to Liquidate a People? Academic Freedom in Turkey and Beyond

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Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise stated, the information in this section is based on phone interviews with the friends and relatives of Mehmet Fatih Traş conducted between 28 February and 8 March 2017. The interviewees expressed their wish to remain anonymous given the current political climate in Turkey.

2. Some of the details of this process can be found at the cover letter Traş wrote as part of his application to CARA (www.barisicinakademisyenler.net).

3. Original emphasis. The reference here is to Oğuz Atay’s cult novel, Tutunamayanlar, which is deemed by many to be untranslatable (see, for example, The Untranslated, 2015). As Hanneke van der Heijden, one of the translators of the Dutch edition of the book, notes, the title word which Traş uses in his suicide note is derived from the verb tutunmak ‘to hold on to (sth.)’.

The negative, expressed by the infix—ama—, adds the meaning of ‘not being able to’, an inability, which at the same time, however, has a touch of unwillingness to it. As a noun the word is a neologism which was coined by Atay; the popularity of the novel made the word enter the Turkish language. (van der Heijden, 2017)

4. There is a deliberate play of words here since the word ‘intellectual’ in Turkish, i.e. aydın, also means ‘enlightened’, ‘bright’, and ‘clear’. By evoking the well-known dualism between light and darkness, Erdoğan morally condemns the stance of the signatories.

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Umut Özkirimli

Umut Özkırımlı is Professor of Political Science at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Lund University. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre (MEC), London School of Economics, and the Centre for Advanced International Theory (CAIT), University of Sussex; Honorary Professor in Europe, Nationalism, and Globalization at the Center for Modern European Studies (CEMES), University of Copenhagen; and a Senior Fellow at Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University. He is the author of Theories of nationalism: A critical introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Contemporary debates on nationalism: A critical engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Tormented by history: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (with Spyros A. Sofos, Hurst & Co. and Oxford University Press, 2008); the second revised and extended edition of Theories of nationalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and The making of a protest movement in Turkey: #occupygezi (edited collection) (Palgrave Pivot, 2014). His latest book is the third, revised and expanded, edition of Theories of nationalism, published in March 2017. He is currently editing a book series on Islam and Nationalism (with Spyros A. Sofos) for Palgrave Macmillan and working on a monograph entitled Models unveiled: Sweden and Turkey as instantiations of a global crisis with Lars Trägårdh, Henrik Berggren, and Spyros A. Sofos which will be published in 2018.