Campus Watch director Winfield Myers examines University of Michigan professor Juan Cole’s recent change of heart regarding Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A former Erdoğan apologist who participated in a 2016 regime-sponsored conference in Turkey, Cole—from a safe distance—now condemns the Turkish strongman for persecuting academics. How convenient.
Myers’s article is posted at the New English Review’s Iconoclast Blog:
It’s a pity – though hardly a surprise – that this change of heart comes two years too late to help thousands of Turkish academics fired and jailed in the aftermath of the failed July, 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan. But when Turkey’s professoriate was under direct attack from the government in the immediate aftermath of the failed July, 2016 coup attempt, Cole was hobnobbing with the Erdoğan’s academic supporters at an Istanbul hotel.
