University Professor in Turkey on Trial for Questioning Ocalan

A university professor in Ankara, Turkey, who raised a question about Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish rebels in the country, is being tried on charges of 'promoting terrorism.' The British newspaper The Guardian reported on Wednesday, February 3, citing the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, that Professor Resat Baris Unlu, a professor at Ankara University, asked his students to compare two texts by Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who is serving a life sentence, at the end of a course on 'Turkish Politics and Institutions.' The report states that the mentioned texts include one of Mr. Ocalan's manifestos published in 1978 titled 'The Path of the Kurdish Revolution' and another article from 2012 titled 'Democratic Modernity, a Criterion for the Structure of Indigenous Systems in the Middle East.' However, the Ankara prosecutor believes that this university professor intended to legitimize Ocalan's views by posing such a question and to convey to his students that he is a political leader. The Guardian writes that despite the efforts of the dean of the faculty and his defense of the right to 'academic freedom,' the Ankara prosecutor has ordered that this university professor appear in court, with the first session of his trial taking place on Wednesday. The prosecutor has also requested a 7-year prison sentence for this university professor. This incident occurs while Turkish police arrested 12 academic figures less than 20 days ago for signing a statement opposing Ankara's military operations against Kurdish rebels, raising concerns about the state of freedom of expression in the country and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's approach to civil liberties. The Turkish army has recently launched extensive operations against the PKK with the aim of destroying this group, but political and human rights activists say that these operations have so far cost the lives of dozens of civilians and should be halted. In this context, Joe Biden criticized the state of freedom of expression in Turkey.