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Posts Tagged ‘law’

Blame anyone but the government (Mar 2017)

Posted in Discussions, English, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 18/03/2017| 2 Comments »

This is a response* to the News Feature “The Turkish paradox: Can scientists thrive in a state of emergency?” (Nature 542, 286-288; 2017), which appeared in the scientific journal Nature.

First, I thank Alison Abbott (the author of the article)** for bringing the problems of Turkey and Turkish scientists to the fore. However, I have found some parts of this article to be factually insufficient. As a Turkish scientist working abroad, I contend that the country’s government is using its former political ally, the Gülen movement, as a scapegoat to cover up their own injustices and incompetence, and remain unaccountable.

It is obvious that this is a well-intentioned piece and the issue was covered due to concern for science and the safety of scientists in Turkey. But, some of the statements in the article require either a reference and/or that they state whose opinions they are. Just one example:

“TÜBİTAK had been deeply infiltrated by the religious organization known as the Gülen movement, which is believed to have orchestrated the coup attempt. Over the past few decades, these followers of exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen had established themselves in Turkey’s military, judiciary and government offices, as well as in universities.”

For me, the use of “infiltrating” and “believed to have orchestrated the coup attempt” are unfortunate. From what I’ve seen, the accused are ordinary Turkish citizens who happen variously to sympathise with none, little, some or most of Gülen’s teachings and – whatever you think of Gülen – have every right to work in any workplace in Turkey. Also “believed” means (at least should mean) nothing in the eyes of the law without concrete evidence.

There are other statements which I do not even want to get into:

“Scientists generally agree that removing Gülenists from the system was necessary, and not just because of the coup attempt. ”

Which scientists agree with this? How do you determine that someone is a “Gülenist”? Is sympathising with some of Gülen’s teaching/ideas a crime?

So, the main question here is: where/whom/what is the reliable sources for this article? The individuals who stated these views do not have any additional information other than what they are being exposed to on pro-government media outlets and unfortunately have acted as a mouthpiece for the government’s propaganda. Over eight months has passed since the “15 July coup attempt” (intentionally put in inverted commas, as what happened that day was too strange an event to be called an ordinary “coup attempt”), and sceptics like me are still waiting for an independent investigation*** into what went on that day and whom was really to blame. Consequently, we are also waiting for concrete evidence linking Gülen, and more importantly, the tens of thousands of people (including thousands of academics, journalists and judges; see http://turkeypurge.com/ for comprehensive figures) whom the government have unconstitutionally sacked and/or jailed, to the “coup attempt”. Additionally, Gülen has repeatedly denied the accusations and – whatever you think of Gülen and/or his followers – the burden of proof is on the accusers (i.e. the Turkish government and the President).

I’d like to bring some context to the story: the Gülen movement has/had millions of followers in Turkey (and in over 160 countries around the world) and is well-known to have an emphasis on education, inter-faith tolerance and dialogue. Before our President (Erdogan) started closing schools, ordering the burning of books and purging/jailing academics whom he labelled as Gülen-“FETÖ”-related (anyone who does not fully support him will be included under this term; it’s only a matter of time!), almost everyone (and I mean everyone; many seculars and the religious) in Turkey wanted their children to attend their schools as they were well-known for bringing the best out of them – academically and ethic/morally. It is then a statistical inevitability that these people will be over-represented in most settings. They did not ‘infiltrate’, but rather deserved to be where they were. Also for the same reasons, almost everyone in Turkey is at least vaguely associated with the Gülen movement (e.g. via a friend, colleague, child’s attendance to a “Gülen-inspired” tuition centre); sometimes without knowing, as many Gulen-inspired people did not declare it publicly. Therefore it is possible to indict/imprison anyone, including President Erdogan himself, if being associated with the movement was a crime. And that is exactly what the government is doing, except that this criteria is only being used against anyone who is a non-loyalist and with a bit of influence; hence the numbers, reaching almost a hundred thousand imprisoned and/or dismissed from their posts.

Needless to say, if some of them have committed crimes for the benefit of Gülen, themselves and/or the movement, (after due process) it should be those individuals who pay the price and not the whole group. However, so far it seems like President Erdogan is not interested in finding criminals, but rather acting in a revanchist manner and destroying anyone who poses a threat to his one-man rule – starting first with the big fish; and choosing the Gülen movement as a scapegoat for the coup attempt was a masterstroke, as many groups in Turkey will find it believable. If Gülen orchestrated this coup attempt, he would have betrayed everything he ever stood for for the last five decades or so and, more importantly, his followers who didn’t know anything about a coup attempt and definitely would not support such an abhorrent event – in fact there is clear evidence that this was the case as even soldiers/generals who were dismissed/imprisoned as “Gülenists” had not taken part in the coup attempt. These just didn’t make sense, and were the main reasons why I chose to wait for an independent investigation to learn the full story (which has not happened, causing me to think that the government are intentionally hiding the truth) – before I can denounce him. Still waiting…

Finally, unfortunately, many academics in Turkey (especially the silence of secular academics was disappointing to say the least!) have stood quite when innocent people/academics/journalists/lawyers/teachers were being jailed/sacked for laughable charges (e.g. for downloading an app called “Bylock”; having an account in a legal bank called “Bank Asya”, owned by a “Gülen-inspired” group; contributing to charities such as “Kimse Yok mu?” which are led mostly by “Gülen-inspired” people). Now it is their turn unfortunately and no one is left to defend them or let their voices be heard in Turkey – as “Gülen-inspired” media (e.g. Zaman, Samanyolu TV****, Bugün), before they were all closed down, had great influence and allowed representatives of different ideologies/political parties to voice their opinions in their channels/newspapers/journals.

 

Addition to post (25/03/17): Over the last week or so, there were important statements made by: (i) the chief of the BND (German national intelligence agency) Bruno Kahl and (ii) the chair of the (US) House Intel committee Devin Nunes, essentially proclaiming that there was no concrete evidence linking Gülen and/or the Gülen movement to the “coup attempt”. These were then followed by a comprehensive report by the (UK) Foreign Affairs Committee, making similar points. These are significant statements contradicting the Turkish government’s rhetoric, thus the best way to clear themselves of any accusations (e.g. of faking a coup and making the most of it to silence opposition) is to allow an independent organisation to carry out an investigation into what happened on the 15th of July and the preceding days.

 

*This piece is a longer version of the (~200 word) Correspondence I have sent to the editors – which they have gracefully accepted (titled: Listen to the accused Turkish scientists). For an enhanced pdf version of the article, click here.

**I also thank Celeste Biever (Chief news editor at Nature) for giving me the opportunity to write and publish a response

***To make matters even more suspicious for sceptics like me, a shambolic/tragicomical investigation was carried out by the “15 Temmuz Darbe Girişimini Araştırma Komisyonu” (a committee comprising of 15 Turkish MPs; 9 from AKP, 4 from CHP, 1 from MHP and 1 from HDP), which concluded without quizzing any of: (i) the Chief of the General Staff, Hulusi Akar, (ii) Director of Turkish Intelligence, Hakan Fidan, (iii) Zekai Aksakallı, the general who allegedly stopped the coup plotters (iv) the Prime Minister, Binali Yildırım, (v) the President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – although, at least the former three, should have been the first ones to be interrogated.

****I have not even watched Samanyolu TV (or Samanyolu Haber TV, their news channel) once since ~2014 but I know, although there was clear bias for people with similar beliefs to them (i.e. religious, moderate, and sympathises with Gülen’s teaching), people from most ‘sides’ – if not all – were being welcomed on their shows. Zaman (newspaper) and Bugün TV were different though: They really did have people of all beliefs/political parties/ethnicities feature frequently on their columns/shows/programmes.

 

PS: I declare that I do not have any financial conflicts of interest. I also do not contribute to or attend any Gülen-related activities since 2016. I wrote to Nature as I thought it was my intellectual responsibility to provide my views on the matter. I saw that the Turkish government were getting away with murder by using the “FETÖ” card on everything and anything – and many people were buying into it because they were a very convenient scapegoat.

References:

Abbott A. 2017. The Turkish paradox: Can scientists thrive in a state of emergency? Nature. URL: https://www.nature.com/news/the-turkish-paradox-can-scientists-thrive-in-a-state-of-emergency-1.21475

Erzurumluoglu AM. 2017. Politics: Listen to accused Turkish scientists. Nature. URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/543491c

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What connects history, culture, law, genetics and preventive medicine? (Sept 2015)

Posted in Discussions, English, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 22/09/2015| 1 Comment »

Laws regarding first-cousin marriage around the world. Navy blue: First-cousin marriage legal. Light Blue: Allowed with restrictions or exceptions. Yellow: Legality dependent on religion or culture. Red: Statute bans first-cousin marriage. Pink: Banned with exceptions. Dark Red: Criminal offense. Grey: No available data. The image has been released into the public domain by the author (URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage).

Laws regarding first-cousin marriage around the world. Navy blue: First-cousin marriage legal. Light Blue: Allowed with restrictions or exceptions. Yellow: Legality dependent on religion or culture. Red: Statute bans first-cousin marriage. Pink: Banned with exceptions. Dark Red: Criminal offense. Grey: No available data. The image has been released into the public domain by the author (URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage).

The answer is (studying) consanguinity (i.e. unions between relatives such as first-cousin marriages); and one cannot understand the complexity of the issue (and make ‘informed’ decisions) without reading the literature of these five apparently unconnected fields. It is fair to say that there is a degree of hostility towards consanguineous marriages in Western societies. However this perception is usually attained without in-depth knowledge on the genetic effects of consanguinity. In short, consanguinity per se (i.e. on its own) does not cause a disorder, but rather it increases the probability of an autosomal recessive disorder (which require two copies of the same) causal mutation to be in a homozygous state (i.e. possess two copies of the same mutation). When this happens both copies of the genes we inherited from our parents do not function properly.

Unions between individuals who are second-cousins or closer are considered ‘consanguineous’ in clinical genetics. Consanguineous families with diseases have been studied thoroughly by clinical geneticists for the last two-three decades – and this has allowed for identification of many disease causal genes. However, studying consanguineous populations as a whole rather than ‘cherry picking’ families with disease can offer much more for better understanding our genome and therefore finding new targets for preventive and curative medicine. Many genes in our genome still have unknown functions and we have merely scratched the surface in terms of their interactions. I hypothesise that assigning a function to the thousands of remaining genes will only be feasible if consanguineous populations are studied as a whole (i.e. also including families without disease to the studies) and I therefore carry out theoretical studies to estimate the sample size needed and how many genes will be completely ‘knocked-out’ if these studies were to be carried out. This approach proposes a ‘paradigm shift’ in clinical genetics.

Global prevalence of consanguineous unions. Consanguinity has deep roots in many cultures and it is impossible to interfere/intervene from the outside without first understanding why people engage in cousin marriages. Image source URL: www.consang.net/

Global prevalence of consanguineous unions. Consanguinity has deep roots in many cultures and it is impossible to interfere/intervene from the outside without first understanding why people engage in cousin marriages. Image source URL: http://www.consang.net/

Consanguineous unions occur very rarely in Western countries for a variety of sociological (e.g. cultural, negative media coverage) and statistical reasons (e.g. smaller families means fewer cousins at similar age), but the complete opposite is true in certain regions of the world where union of kin is seen as the default choice. Conservative estimates predict that approximately one-sixth of the world’s population (a figure of 1.1 billion is proposed by the Geneva International Consanguinity Workshop Report) live in highly consanguineous regions; and also another one-sixth falls into the ‘unknown’ category – reflecting the need for further research. Historically, consanguineous unions were also common amongst the elite in the UK (up to mid-19th century, including Charles Darwin), the Pharaohs and the Royal families of Europe (e.g. Habsburgs).

Views of main religions towards consanguineous marriages. NB: Where first-cousin marriages are allowed, lower levels of consanguinity are also allowed. Image Source: Copy-pasted from my own PhD thesis

The increase in the probability of a mutation being homozygous will depend on the level of relatedness between the parents. For example, approximately 6.25% of mutations are expected to be homozygous in the offspring of first cousins. This figure would be (near) 0% in the offspring of outbred individuals. Genetically, this is the main difference between union of kin and union of unrelated individuals. We all have many disease-causal mutations in our genomes (but in heterozygous state, i.e. one normal copy and one mutated copy) and different kinds of mutations are out there in all populations. However because these mutations will be very rare or are unique to you or your family, they do not get to meet their counterpart when you have offspring with an unrelated individual. Therefore the mutation’s homozygous effects are never observed. This is why rare autosomal recessive disorders are almost always seen in consanguineous offspring.

This difference in homozygosity levels is also one of the main reasons behind the necessity of studying consanguineous individuals and populations. These studies can turn unfortunate events (e.g. disorder in families) to a great use for medical sciences. Not only will identifying a disease-causal mutation help with diagnostics, they can enable scientists to understand what certain genes do and help us understand why the gene causes that disease. Rare instances can be highly informative about preventable outcomes relevant to the whole population. For example, had more notice been taken in the 1980s of the proof which familial hypercholesterolemia provided for the causal role of cholesterol in coronary heart disease (CHD), high cholesterol intake would have been better addressed for the nation a decade sooner. To provide numbers, CHD is still the UK’s biggest killer causing over 80 thousand deaths a year, thus paying more attention to information that was coming from studies of consanguineous unions could have saved thousands of lives just in this single case.

Given the advancements in genetic diagnostics (e.g. huge decreases in costs of DNA sequencing), screening for all known mutations will become feasible in the near future for everybody – and identifying disease-causal mutations will become even more useful for all of us. Our genomes are constantly being mutated and my approach will enable a much broader understanding of our genome by observing these mutations’ homozygous effects. Finally, rather than discourage (See link for an example) consanguineous marriages totally (not feasible in the foreseeable future due to many socio-economic and cultural reasons), for those willing to marry a cousin, screening for previously identified mutations will help these couples take more informed decisions.

consanguinity factors culture socio-economic

Factors influenced by consanguinity and culture. Image Source: Copy-pasted from my own PhD thesis (hence the Figure 1.10)

Key reference:

A. Mesut Erzurumluoglu, 2016. Population and family based studies of consanguinity: Genetic and Computational approaches. PhD thesis. University of Bristol.

Erzurumluoglu AM et al, 2016. Importance of Genetic Studies in Consanguineous Populations for the Characterization of Novel Human Gene Functions. Annals of Human Genetics, 80: 187–196.

 

PS: Whilst the media is mostly responsible for portraying consanguinity the way they understand (and with more contrast added on of course), they could be forgiven as the genetic effects of consanguinity is not fully understood amongst geneticists either, especially in the field of complex trait genetics – thus the extra incentive for studying them.

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