PRESS RELEASE – For immediate release
BAYOT (West European Organization for Higher Eduacated Turks) condemns the management of Stiftung Zentrum fur Turkeistudien (Foundation of Centrum for Turkish Studies) for firing Dr. Faruk Sen for expressing his democratic views.
Dr Faruk Sen, the founder of the foundation located at Essen, Germany has been sacked on June 27, 2008 for expressing his opinions about the situation of the Turkish minority in Western Europe and comparing it to the exclusion and sufferings of the Jews in an article published in a Turkish newspaper ‘Referans’.
In the article later also published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung under the title ‘Europe’s New Jews’, Sen reported “although our people, who have been living in Central and Western Europe for 47 years now, have generated 125,000 businesses that bring in a total revenue of 45 billion Euro, they suffer discrimination and exclusion just as the Jews did — though to a different degree and with different outward appearances” .
The article had been addressed to a Turkish businessman of Jewish backgound, Ishak Alaton who was verbally attacked and complained about anti-Semitism. Sen wrote: “Don’t be sorry about the anti-Semitic tendencies of some groups in Turkey. We, the Turkish people and new Jews of Europe, support you.”
Faruk Sen who was the head of the Center for Turkish Studies in Essen, Germanyfor 23 years, said he would fight the dismissal in court.
BAYOT Duisburg condems this undemocratic action of the management which brings back the sad memories of intolerance and the attacks of free expression in academia in recent history of Germany. BAYOT Duisburg sees this action as a sad sign of management efforts to use the Centrum to control the Turkish community in Germany, rather than to help improve the German Turkish dialogue.