Academics calling for peace 'conscience' of Turkey: HDP

Academics and intellectuals who publicly called on the Turkish government to end security operations in southeastern Anatolia and return to the table for talks to resolve the Kurdish issue are the "conscience of the country," a co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has said.

"There is not a single societal segment that has not been insulted and belittled by President [Recep Tayyip Erdo?an]," HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirta? told reporters on Jan. 13, a day after the former labeled more than 1,000 national and international academics as "poor excuses for intellectuals" for daring to criticize the government's military operations.

"You know that since he is one of the distinguished academics of our country, he has a lot of honorary doctorate degrees ? I wonder what his university life was like; nobody knows about it," Demirta? said, mocking Erdo?an. 
 
"Asking for peace in this country and saying no to bloodshed was the main slogan of the 'resolution process' for which he said he would do anything, including 'drinking hemlock' until a year ago," he said, referring to Erdo?an's earlier remarks that "he would do anything to resolve the [Kurdish] issue," including drinking poison.

"People should not be afraid of asking for peace," he said. "The academic world should be free; they cannot work by taking orders and instructions from either the president or YÖK [the Supreme Education Board]. I believe that the academics and the intellectuals who released the declaration are the conscience of the country," he stated.

Some 1,128 academics from 89 different universities - including foreign scholars like Noam Chomsky, David Harvey and Immanuel Wallerstein - signed the declaration titled "We won't be a part of this crime,"...