Turkish police arrest 16 academics in Diyarbakir University

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Kurdistan24) – Turkish anti-terror police units on Sunday arrested 16 academics in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir who were members of the local Dicle University.

The academics, several of them professors, were of hundreds who the government recently expelled from their jobs, reported the Kurdistan24 bureau in Diyarbakir.

On Saturday, two new decrees signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan targeted 3,974 civil servants and military personnel, including 484 academics on the grounds of allegedly posing a threat to national security or having ties to “terrorist groups.”

Dicle University is often the scene of protests and clashes between students and the police, especially during Kurdish celebrations such as Newroz, the new year.

Diyarbakir police raided the homes and university offices of the academics who were also signatories of a January 2016 petition condemning human rights violations during Turkish army operations in urban centers against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) affiliates.

As academics called for a ceasefire and return to peace talks, the months-long urban conflict destroyed major parts of a dozen Kurdish towns and displaced over half a million people, according to the UN.

The group of over 2,000 Turkish, Kurdish, and international academics drew Erdogan’s wrath who called them “rip-off intellectuals,” and accused those from Turkey of treason.

The signatories have since then been under strict government scrutiny, judicial interrogations, and investigations by the Council of Higher Education, a state institution supervising universities in Turkey.

In the aftermath of the failed July 15 military coup attempt against Erdogan’s rule, over 7,600 academics lost their jobs along with some 120,000 state employees.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany