Academic Freedom under Authoritarian Rule in Post-2016 Turkey: Institutional Recomposition and Individual Trajectories

This article examines the transformations of academic freedom in Turkey under the authoritarian turn following the attempted coup of July 2016. Drawing on 38 biographical interviews with scholars of different statuses, we analyze how repression has reshaped both individual trajectories and the structure of the academic field. Far from being limited to dismissals or judicial sanctions, political repression operates as a mode of governance that combines the exclusion of dissenting voices with the construction of a loyal academic environment. We show how the loss of institutional autonomy has been reinforced by the centralization of recruitment, the appointment of rectors by the President, and the stigmatization of the Peace Petition signatories. At the biographical level, repression has led to processes of downward mobility, symbolic devaluation, and family ruptures, but also to strategies of resistance and conversion of cultural capital into political, civic, or international resources. By highlighting these heterogeneous trajectories, the article contributes to a broader reflection on the recomposition of knowledge and academic freedom in contexts of authoritarian constraint.