Turkish lecturer on trial after exam question on PKK leader

At the end of a course on Turkish politics and institutions, Ankara University professor Resat Baris Unlu set his students a question comparing two documents written by the founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who is currently serving life in jail. The professor is now to be put on trial himself for “terrorist propaganda” amid growing concerns for freedom of expression in Turkey.

The paper asked students to “compare Abdullah Ocalan’s 1978 manifesto entitled ‘The Path of the Kurdistan Revolution’ and an article he wrote in 2012 called ‘Democratic Modernity as the Construction of Local System in the Middle East’”.

Ankara prosecutors seized on the question, deciding his intent had been “to legitimise (Ocalan’s) opinions and impress upon (his students) the idea that he was a political leader.”

Despite efforts to intervene by the dean of the faculty in the name of “academic freedom”, the prosecutor ordered the professor to appear in court, recommending he be sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

The hearing has been set for Wednesday.

Last month, US Vice President Joe Biden criticised Turkey for failing to set the right “example” on freedom of expression, after three senior journalists were detained and a major investigation into more than 1,200 academics who signed a petition criticising the military offensive was launched.