A physicist’s life upended in Turkey

Ali C. Basaran was poised to become one of Turkey’s rising scientific stars. Having focused his ambitions on science and country after a powerful earthquake devastated his hometown, he won a coveted scholarship from the Turkish government to study magnetic physics in the US. He returned to Turkey in 2015 eager to start his own lab and teach the next generation of Turkish physicists.

Less than two years later, Basaran is neither running a lab nor teaching students. After losing his research job in September, he is now earning the equivalent of a dollar or two an hour fixing smartphones and tablets at a local electronics shop. He is banned for life from working in Turkey’s public sector, yet he cannot leave the country to pursue other opportunities.

Basaran is one of tens of thousands of academics and public officials who have been accused by the government of supporting the failed coup in the country last July. Many of the accused are in jail ; others, including Basaran, have lost their livelihoods based on little more than suspicion on the part of their superiors. (The US State Department’s recently released human rights report says that numerous individuals have been “wrongfully detained for ties to the coup based on poison-pen allegations driven by personal or other rivalries.”) Basaran denies any connection with the Gülen movement, which Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has blamed for the coup attempt.

After months of staying silent, Basaran decided to speak out about his ordeal and how it has affected his family, his research, and his future. He spoke from his home near Istanbul via Skype in February. What follows is an edited version of Basaran’s account.

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In 1999 there was a big earthquake in Turkey that was centered right near where I lived. I was 18 years old and just about to graduate from high school. Many of my friends died. Because of that I decided to be a good scientist, to do something good for my country and for my people.

I earned my bachelor’s degree in physics at Gazi University and master’s degree in physics at Gebze Institute of Technology [now Gebze Technical University ] in Turkey. Gebze is one of the best physics institutes in Turkey, especially in experimental magnetic physics. Then I decided to continue my education abroad. I won a scholarship from the Turkish government that covered my expenses. In return I agreed to come back to Turkey and work in the public sector.

I attended a doctoral program in experimental physics at the University of California, San Diego, with Ivan K. Schuller . I earned my PhD in five years and stayed an extra year as a postdoc. I am a coauthor on more than 20 high-impact papers in the field of magnetism and superconductivity.

After my short postdoctoral appointment at UCSD, I came back to Turkey in July 2015. The first thing I had to do was obtain an equivalence degree for my outside PhD. It took me about three months. Gebze took me back in December 2015, but things had changed in the six years when I was in the US. I felt like there was negativity, that someone didn’t like my return or presence at the university. They told me there was no assistant professor position available and that they could offer only a research assistant position. It was a lower position than I had expected, but it’s mandatory.

Ivan had taught me that in academics there are always obstacles and competition. So I decided to deal with the negativity by proving myself with my papers, research quality, and proposals. I knew some people from my previous physics studies in Turkey. In order to start doing research and collaborations, I started using their lab time since I didn’t have my own time. One can imagine how using someone else’s time was difficult for an ambitious young scientist full of ideas. Doing research in a country like Turkey is completely different than in the US. Access to money and equipment is very limited. In terms of position and research opportunities, I was not in a good place even before everything started.

The coup attempt occurred on 15 July 2016. A week later, 22 July, I got a letter from the president of the university saying that I was suspended from my job because of possible connections to this Gülen group that attempted the coup. I was in my office writing a proposal. I was shocked and surprised. I didn’t know what to do. I had gone to a public high school and university, not the Gülenist schools, so I had no connections to the group when I was in Turkey. I’m not a political guy, either.

An hour later a security guy came to my office and took the three of us who were suspended from the physics department. They did not allow me to take my items from the office, and they changed the lock. I was trying to understand why this was happening to me.

A week later, 28 July, at 6am the police came to my house. They had a search warrant. They searched everything in the house, and they took all my digital items: my phone, laptops, hard drives, flash drives, whatever you can imagine. Basically, it was all my life: my PhD, my data and programs, papers I was refereeing, everything. As of today, I still don’t have any of these items.

They put me in handcuffs and put me into the police car. They were acting like I had done something bad. My wife and kids were crying. The police took me to the university and waited for people to come. They took us [eight other Gebze academics were also detained that day] inside of the university with handcuffs and made a little show of us. Then we went to the police station, and they put me in custody for four days. We couldn’t say anything. The government had declared a state of emergency. They had the option to take a person for 30 days without any explanation.

After this time, they asked me some survey questions: Have you been in touch with Gülen? Did you go to Pennsylvania [where Fethullah Gülen lives] during your time in the US? But they didn’t accuse me of anything. They were just trying to understand if I had any connection with Gülenist groups. Then they took me to the courthouse. The prosecuting attorney asked me some similar questions. The judge decided not to put me in jail, but I have to go to the police station three times a week and provide my signature. They canceled my passports, so I cannot go outside of the country. Basically, I cannot move anywhere. At the time I was feeling very lucky because at least I wasn’t in jail. I mean, if the judge had said go to jail, there was nothing I could have done.

Since then, seven months now, it’s still the same. Without any explanation or trial, I am going to the police station Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and signing. I do not know when this is going to end and when I will be able to return to my normal life.

On 1 September the government made an emergency decree. They issued a list of almost 50 000 people who were dismissed from public work . I saw my name on the list. I hired a lawyer and appealed to the constitutional court. I also appealed to many other places, including the university and the Council of Higher Education. Normally it should take a month to get an answer on an appeal, but it is seven months now, and I’m still waiting to hear from anybody.

At first I didn’t know what to do. I’m a physicist, an expert in nanotechnology. I had spent my entire career in academia. In Turkey it is very difficult to find jobs at private companies with a physics degree, even in normal times.

It was very hard to find a job, but life was going on, and I have two kids. I had to take care of my family. Luckily I am an experimental physicist. During my PhD studies I had learned many skills to overcome obstacles. I hadn’t repaired any smartphones or tablets before in my life, but I learned in three days. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I got a job in a small repair shop. The salary is the minimum—it’s about $400 a month—which is not enough for four people. So I am currently getting help from my family and my wife’s family to pay our bills.

The worst part is the social side. Your neighbors, friends, and even strangers look at you like you did something, like you did something bad. Now I want to believe that’s finally starting to change. There are more than 100 000 people who have been dismissed from public jobs, including about 5000 from academia. If you consider their families, their close friends, and their distant friends, it’s affected a million people. So now I think many people are starting to believe that there are innocent ones, but it is difficult to distinguish by the government.

For the last seven months I’ve had this mandatory break from physics. It’s very difficult to take a break for a year and then come back to academia. You have to read papers and follow the literature. You have to keep writing. It’s going to be very difficult for me to go back to where I was. I am still contributing to some papers with my colleagues. But it’s difficult because I’m working like I’m in a sweatshop from 8am to 8pm. That’s 12 hours a day, six days a week. So there isn’t much time left over.

I have a friend who worked with me at UCSD. We had been writing proposals and papers together. He has to publish papers within the next two or three years because he needs to get tenure. He was depending on me to write this paper because I was the main guy doing the research, and I had the data. But the data is gone. The data is not there. I’m not able to write this paper. I was also mentoring a few grad students, helping them with their experiments and analyzing data. They need to write papers and a thesis to get their PhD. So it’s not only my life—it also affects many other colleagues’ lives.

I have four offers right now for academic jobs [including one from Schuller at UCSD] in my pocket. But I am still waiting to hear from the court. I am planning for the future, but I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. So right now I am living for today only, trying to keep myself as strong as possible. If I have the opportunity to leave, I will certainly consider that, although I am a real patriot. I returned to Turkey to bring back what I learned and teach students, obtain my own lab, and do high-quality research. I just wanted to contribute to my country as a good scientist. But what happened to me is they just took all my dreams away. I think this is the worst thing that one can do to a young scientist.

During my time in the US I had never even gotten a traffic ticket. I hadn’t interacted with the police in my entire life. I’d never seen handcuffs. So after spending those four days in jail, of course I was scared. I actually kept silent for a long time. My family and I just went into our shells and tried to understand what is going on in our country. I had not been thinking about writing or speaking or lifting up my voice against these things, because it may get even worse for me. After all this silence time, I am ready to accept the price no matter what, because I don’t think it’s right to do nothing. I have to do something.