Turkey is now the number one country for applications from under-threat scholars seeking safety in Western universities, according to two charities that help at-risk academics. With hundreds of academics sacked, suspended or under investigation in the wake of the unsuccessful coup attempt in July, the Scholar Rescue Fund is confronted with an “unprecedented” number of requests for help, its director Sarah Willcox told an audience at the European Association for International Education’s annual conference held in Liverpool from September 13-16.

This New York-based charity, part of the Institute of International Education (IIE), has received 65 applications from academics looking to work outside Turkey owing to fear of political persecution, and, in some cases, imprisonment and violence since late July, said Willcox on September 15. “They all meet our criteria (for assistance) but it is a question of funding and we have to dig deep,” said Willcox, who explained that the level of applications is “unprecedented” in the IIE’s 95-year history of helping academics at risk of persecution abroad.

The flurry of applications for the charity’s $25,000 (Rs.16.7 lakh) fellowships, which is then matched by universities that agree to employ the at-risk academic on a temporary basis, exceeds the recent spike in demand that followed the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, which led a third of all academics and 100,000 students to flee the country, says Willcox.

Applications for help also soared following Iraq’s invasion in 2003, she added. “We had a different landscape for Iraq, where the US was quick to jump in and provide funding — Syria was the same,” says Willcox.

The UK-based Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara) is also receiving 15-20 applications a week for help, up from four or five a week in 2015, says its executive director Stephen Wordsworth. “The largest number is now coming from Turkey, which is very sad,” he adds. Cara, formerly known as the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics, now supports 214 scholars, compared with just a few dozen in its early decades, when it helped future Nobel prize-winning scientists such as Max Perutz and Hans Krebs.