freedom of speech in Turkey
“EUA condemns strongly and unconditionally this action against universities and university staff, and expresses its heartfelt support for the higher education community in Turkey at this time.”
Following the failed attempt at a military coup in Turkey last week, Erdoğan’s government has sacked a huge number of public workers, including all Deans of Turkey’s universities and 15,200 education staff so far. Plus barring all academics from travelling abroad. Although Erdoğan’s government has been democratically elected and while the Turkish people’s actions against the military coup led it to fail, the current purge of the public sector does not proceed from democratic principles and the current Turkish constitution and laws. Further, it sounds like the crackdown is aimed at all forms of opposition rather than at those responsible for the coup, as illustrated by the closure of websites like WikiLeaks, journals and other media.
Xi'an's Og 
July 22, 2016 at 12:27 am
It’s probably worth noting that they’ve suspended the European convention on human rights, which is exactly what Therese May was advocating.
July 21, 2016 at 9:17 pm
[…] Now the military coup reported by Turkey strongly reminds me of the Reichstagsbrand. Basically, Nazis used the fact that the parliament building was lit on fire and blamed their political opponents for the crime, starting to remove them from all important positions and parliament itself by claiming the communists where planning a coup. The parallels to Erdogans way of proceeding are striking, and like in the Nazi case, the sheer speed with which possibly opposing forces in all parts of society are losing their positions is at least dodgy. Hitler called the fire a sign from God, Erdogan the coup a gift from Allah. What can you say? History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Another statistician has more thoughts. […]
July 21, 2016 at 10:02 pm
I quite agree with the similarity. What is most striking is that the Erdoĝan government had lists of names in the civil service, justice and education at the ready, i.e., before the coup unravelled. While I have no idea whether or not the coup was genuine, it provided the government with an easy justification to move to emergency powers.