Imprisoned politicians Figen Yüksekdağ and Sebahat Tuncel declared their solidarity with students in Turkey. It is the right time to organize and win, they said in greeting messages from Kandıra prison.
For more than a month, students have been demonstrating in several cities in Turkey to defend the autonomy of universities. The protests were triggered by the appointment of AKP politician Melih Bulu as rector of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. In previous years, Turkish university rectors were elected internally by universities, but after the 2016 coup attempt, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured access to universities. Bulu is the first head of the renowned university who was not appointed internally, but by the president.
Politicians Figen Yüksekdağ and Sebahat Tuncel, who have been imprisoned in the maximum-security prison of Kandıra since 2016, declared their solidarity with the protest of the student movement in Turkey and welcomed the resistance for academic freedom.
A message from Yüksekdağ, former co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), said:
"The youth in universities are not condemned to obedience to the rulers or to unemployment and an uncertain future after their studies. The struggle to return the universities, which have been tranformed into an arena of profit for unqualified militants of the government, to their rightful owners - the students and the university autonomy - is a duty. Now is indeed the right time to organize in solidarity and resolutely strengthen the will to win. The time is ripe to extend a hand and a heart to the students organized at the HDP. No power can stand against an idea and movement whose time has come. I welcome the will to organize and liberate and wish you success - with the conviction that your will is going to result in an advance."
The message by Sebahat Tuncel also said that it is time to put a stop to the order established in Turkey; "This order drives the youth into poverty and unemployment, condemns them to hunger, robs them of their diligence and efforts, puts the universities, the centers of science, in the service of capitalism, and drives young people into despair. It is time for freedom, dear students from HDP structures. I wish you success in your struggles."
