Dr. Besikçi is one of the distinguished academics of Turkey. He spent more than 15 years of his life in prison, and he was the subject of countless coercions and atrocities. According to the declaration, Dr. Ismail Besikçi was "seriously insulted with embarrassing and humiliating expressions" in two articles published by a web site near to the PKK. It is also claimed that Dr. Besikçi was threatened in one of these articles by saying "the teacher’s approaches overstep the mark."
Although the articles in question were immediately removed from the site, this solidarity campaign has been an occasion to remind Dr. Besikçi’s unforgottenable courageous fight for the freedom of the Kurdish people and to express the solidarity of the democratic forces of Turkey with him:
"Dr. Ismail Besikçi was a respectable intellectual who has valiantly confronted with a rarely encountered bravery, discretion, determination and obstinacy the formal ideology, formal history, formal facts and the TC (Republic of Turkey) behind it that ignore and deny the Kurdish people. Dr. Besikçi is a person who has made living in virtue his principal, who is the symbol of honesty of ideas and intellectual candor.
"The interest of Besikçi in the Kurdish problem has not started with the PKK. His interest in the Kurdish problem is a compulsion and manifestation of intellectual candor and scientific honesty, the conscience of justice, equality and freedom. Because an intellectual is only an intellectual if he/she questions the generally accepted ‘facts’, exposes lies and hypocrisy, if he/she can speak in the name of who doesn’t/can’t, tells what is not/cannot be told, in short, if he can speak where and when everybody keeps silent. That’s why as Julien Benda says ‘The mission of the intellectual is to stand up to that which is unfair and wrong and to confront it with human consciousness while everyone goes down on their knees’, he means Ismail Besikçi and those like him… That which separates the intellectual from the company of those with diplomas who are called ‘enlightened’ (educated) in Turkey is his/her determined and obstinate objection to every kind of sovereignty, all sorts of formal and dominant ideology, formal facts, lies, distortion, ignoring, taboos, icons, superstitions, etc.
"Ismail Besikçi has spent more than 15 years of his life in prison, he was the subject of countless coercions and atrocities. Why? Because the TC had nothing to say to him. As TC could not answer criticism, it chose to punish him by fending him off from the university, by putting him in prison… Now it seems that those who threaten Besikçi in the name of the Kurdish people also don’t have the power to make counter-criticisms and they therefore choose to threaten him… Let us not forget that at the point where intolerance of criticism start, concepts such as freedom, equality and democracy no longer have any worth and credibility.
"Our aim herewith is not to respond to the above-mentioned articles that are not compatible with the customs and style of criticism. We, those who have signed below, wish to announce that our teacher/friend sociologist Dr. Ismail Besikçi, who is the pride of this land, this geography, of all oppressed peoples, and the symbol of being an intellectual, of intellectual honesty, scientific candor, free thought, and criticism is not alone and that we fiercely condemn the ugly attack directed at him."
Fikret BASKAYA, Suavi AYDIN, Sibel ÖZBUDUN, Yüksel AKKAYA, Yücel DEMIRER, Tolga ERSOY, Ismet ERDOGAN, Aydin ÖRDEK, Sait ÇETINOGLU, Temel DEMIRER, Levent KANAT, Babür PINAR, Fatime AKALIN, Haydar ÇETINBAS, Serpil KÖKSAL, Engin BAYRAMOGLU, Ibrahim AKYOL, Merdan ÖZÜDOGRU, Eren KIRMIZIALTIN, Mustafa KARABUDAK, Fettah KARAGÖZ, Ayhan ÇINAR, Mahmut KONUK, Metin AYHAN, Ahmet ÖNAL, Özgür BASKAYA, Mehmet HORUS, Baris ALPARSLAN, Ugur KARA, Emrah CILASUN, Recep MARASLI, Kemal DEMIR, Murat ÖZENÇ, Izzettin ÖNDER, Pasa ÖZTÜRK, Zeynel GÜL, Necmiye ALPAY, Sirin AK, Emrullah SÜSLÜ, Kazim BENLI, Ibrahim AKSOY, Oktay ETIMAN, Ali IMREN, Erkan ARSLAN, Ali ARAL, Seher EROL, Cengiz EKIZ, Kadir CANGIZBAY, Hasan KÜREKÇI, Ragip ZARAKOLU, Sanar YURDATAPAN, Kamil AKSOYLU, Yalçin ERGÜNDOGAN, Mete K. KAYNAR, Attila TUYGAN, Eugene SCHOULGIN, Kemal DOGAN, Zehra SENOGLU, Murat ÇELIKKAN, Ahmet Hamdi SERINGEN, Fatih ÖZTÜRK, Asuman ÖZBEY, Orhan Yalçin GÜLTEKIN, Ersin TEK, Selim MAHMUTOGLU, Cengiz ALGAN Mehmet DEMIR, Mithat SANCAR, Ömürhan SOYSAL, Günay GÜLTEKIN, Hüseyin ÇAKIR, Erdal KARAYAZGAN, Haci TONAK, Yüksel HAN, Prof.Dr.Gençay GÜRSOY, Turgay OGUR, Hürriyet KARADENIZ, Aytekin YILMAZ, Volkan AKYILDIRIM, Hulusi ZEYBEL, Ferhat KENTEL, Ahmet CAKMAK, Berna GÜLER.
http://www.info-turk.be/366.htm#Solidarity
