Boğaziçi University academics voice support of arrested colleagues

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

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Academics from Boğaziçi University issued a press statement on March 18 in support of colleagues who were arrested over terror charges earlier this week. 

In a show of solidarity with Esra Mungan, Muzaffer Kaya and Kıvanç Ersoy, who were arrested on March 15 for allegedly “making terrorist propaganda,” academics presented their “announcement to public opinion from the academic general assembly” in the garden of the university’s campus in Istanbul.

“For the first time in its history, an academic from the Boğaziçi University has been arrested. Esra Mungan is charged with ‘making terrorist propaganda.’ We find this charge unacceptable. The place where our colleague, Mungan, should be is not a prison but the university where she has been teaching and researching for 15 years,” said the statement, read out by Aybek Korugan from the Industrial Engineering Department.

The statement also added that Mungan, Kaya and Ersoy along with academics Meral Camcı, who is the subject of an arrest warrant, and Chris Stephenson, a British academic at Bilgi University who was deported from Turkey after being detained on terror charges, have all used their right to freedom of speech which is protected by the constitution. In the conclusion of the statement, the academics demanded the immediate release of their colleagues.

The arrests of Mungan, Kaya and Ersoy came after they read out a joint petition titled “We won’t be part of this crime.” The petition signed by more than 1,000 colleagues called for an end to security operations targeting militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the southeast.