The Science Academy member İlhan Tekeli was awarded the Jury prize at Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awards 2016.

This year the awards main focus was “New Centers in Turkey: Economy, Education, Art and Peace in Cities”.

The Special Jury Prize was given to İlhan Tekeli  for his work on urban and regional planning, planning theory, macro-geography, migration geography and political behavior, history and theory of local administrations in Turkey, urbanization and urban policy, economic policy, the economic history of Turkey, and urban and community studies.

German mathematical society (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung), the German geoscientific societies (Dachverband Geowissenschaften), and the German society for mathematical logic and philosophy of science (Deutsche Vereinigung für Mathematische Logik und für Grundlagenforschung der
Exakten Wissenschaften) have sent a joint open letter to the attention of the Prime Minister of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoğlu.

To read the letter, please click.

BAGEP 2016 Award Ceremony was held on April 14, 2016 at the METU Conference Center.

The winners (see below)  received their awards. For photos from the ceremony please click.

BAGEP 2016 Winners

The  Nature editorial Power of the Pen – 24 March 2016 (click for the pdf)

Scientists must unite to stop Turkey from removing the right to freedom of expression.

When he labelled outspoken academics as terrorists, Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was probably not thinking of Voltaire’s eighteenth-century philosophical maxim: “To hold a pen is to be at war”.

Erdoğan sent shivers down the spines of those who care about human rights by declaring on 14 March that those who support terrorists are as guilty as those “who pull the trigger”, and …

We have already shared The International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies (IHRNASS)  statement on freedom of speech in Turkey. (please click)

On January 21, 2016 ICSU (International Council of Scientific Unions)  shared their letter to President Tayyip Erdoğan regarding freedom of speech in Turkey. (please click)

On February 1, 2016 ALLEA (All European Academies) shared their support regarding freedom of speech issues in Turkey. (please click)

The Science Academy welcomed world-renowned astrophysicist Prof. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, in the first ever of its recently launched Annual Lectures. At the conference held on 4 February 2016 at Boğaziçi University, Dame Jocelyn gave a lecture on pulsars, which she discovered in 1967, in the context of relativity and gravity.

Please click to watch the video:

The Science Academy welcomed world-renowned astrophysicist Prof. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, in the first ever of its recently launched Annual Lectures. At the conference held on 4 February 2016 at Boğaziçi University, Dame Jocelyn gave a lecture on pulsars, which she discovered in 1967, in the context of relativity and gravity.

Please click to read journalist Reyhan Oksay’s article.

The Science Academy, Turkey member Ayhan Kaya’s project “European Politics of Interculturalism” was chosen by European Commission as success story. Please click for further details of the project.

The International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies (IHRNASS) has issued a statement regarding the Turkish academicians right to free speech. For the pdf file please click. Furthermore as of 25 January 30 Nobel Laureates have endorsed this statement (full list here)

January 19, 2016

The International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies (H.R. Network) supports and defends the right of fellow academics, anywhere in the world, to peacefully express their lawful opinions and concerns. We, the members of the H.R. Network’s Executive Committee, are alarmed by the increasingly repressive and inflammatory reaction by …