Turkish universities support Gaza protests on US campuses

Major Turkish universities expressed their support on Thursday for the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests sweeping college campuses across the US.

"Over the past six months, university students peacefully protesting the brutality against Gaza's innocent people have been subjected to violence," they said in a joint statement published on their social media accounts.

"We are profoundly saddened and vehemently condemn the disproportionate response to the peaceful demonstrations by university students. We regard it as a violation of academic freedom and fundamental human rights," they added.

The statement was shared on the social media accounts of leading Turkish universities, including Afyonkarahisar University of Health Sciences, Anadolu University, Ankara University, Bursa Uludag University, Dokuz Eylul University, Istanbul Technical University and Middle East Technical University.

The protests in the US started a few days ago at Columbia University and spread to other colleges.

Student-led protests demanding that universities condemn Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and divest from Israeli firms have continued to spread, with new encampments being erected in the face of law enforcement crackdowns.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik's decision last week to ask the New York Police Department to arrest dozens of protesters largely served as a flashpoint for the wider protest movement.

Protests have since been reported on several campuses, including California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, Yale, the University of Minnesota, Swarthmore College and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester in New York, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Emerson College in Massachusetts, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.