WHERE IS THE BDS MOVEMENT IN THE FACE OF THE TURKISH STALINIST PURGE? 59,628 professors have had their teaching licenses withdrawn. 1,577 university presidents have been forced to resign. A climate of persecution, denunciation and suspicion in university classrooms and at the Ministry of Education prevails. This is the great academic purge that Turkish President Erdogan launched after the failed coup with numbers reminiscent of the Stalinist academic purges in the USSR. In light of this dramatic assault on intellectual freedom in Turkey, one would expect that Western academic legions would be in turmoil to show solidarity with Turkish colleagues, besieged and persecuted. Yet, these Western champions of freedom who have embraced the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) against Israel did not find the time to launch any campaign against the Turkish purge, unworthy even of a raised eyebrow of scandal. In England, the National Association of Teachers in Higher Education and the Association of University Teachers, which have adopted the boycott of Israel, have been silent about Turkey. The same silence prevails from the USA Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which was signed by 500 American professors. And then there’s the silence from 300 Italian academics who promoted the Israeli boycott.

Double standards have already emerged from the words of Curtis Marez, the president of the American Studies Association who voted to boycott Israel. When he was asked why his organization was only attacking Israel and not, for example, China or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, Marez answered: “One has to start somewhere”. The president of the American Studies Association had also said that the boycott of Israel “is the best way to protect and expand academic freedom and access to education”. This does not apply to the 59,628 Turkish teachers. Only the Jewish State, the only democracy in the Middle East where BDS supporters enjoy freedom and visibility, deserves Western condemnation. (Israel National News)