AAUP Protests Turkish Scholar’s Sentencing

On January 30, AAUP President Cary Nelson wrote to Turkish Minister of Justice Mehmet Ali Sahin  expressing the Association’s deep concern over the sentencing of Professor Atilla Yayla, a faculty member of the Gazi University.  Yayla received a fifteen-month suspended jail sentence, subjecting him to police supervision, for suggesting in a panel discussion held in November 2006 that the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was not as progressive as official portrayals indicate. Read Nelson’s letter (.pdf).