Turkey’s Constitutional Court on Friday said the rights of academics who were dismissed or prosecuted for signing a “peace petition” were violated, the T24 news website reported.
The decision was made by Constitutional Court President Zühtü Arslan’s tie-breaking vote. The top court also ordered the government to pay TL 9,000 in damages to each of the nine academics who appealed.
Many of the 1,128 Turkish academics who signed the petition calling on the Turkish government to halt military operations in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region of the country in 2016 have been dismissed from their positions, sentenced to prison or face an overseas travel ban.
After the academics were targeted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for having signed the petition, more academics decided to sign it in an act of solidarity.
According to the Evrensel daily, 784 of the academics currently have trials pending.