Inside Turkey's World Decolonization Forum: Convicted Terrorist, Columbia Professor, and Erdoğan's Daughter
A state-aligned Istanbul summit mainstreamed Sami Al-Arian, Joseph Massad, and Esra Albayrak under the banner of academic "decolonization."
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The World Decolonization Forum 2026, held May 11–12 at Istanbul’s Atatürk Cultural Center, was marketed as a sober academic gathering on “decolonizing knowledge production and circulation.” But a Jewish Onliner review of the forum’s official agenda, booklet, partner list — combined with English, Turkish, and Arabic-language coverage — reveals a different picture: a state-aligned event that placed Sami Al-Arian, a former Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader convicted in U.S. federal court of aiding terrorism, on the same plenary stage as Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad, among other controversial figures.
The opening keynote was delivered by Esra Albayrak, the daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who called for new “centres of wisdom” in “Istanbul, Jakarta, Addis Ababa, Rabat, Cairo and Gaza.” The forum was promoted by state broadcaster TRT World and co-organized with institutions tied to Turkey’s religious directorate, making it perhaps the most ambitious effort yet to translate Erdoğan’s pro-Hamas posture into the language of global academia.
Erdoğan’s Daughter at the Helm
The forum was hosted by Enstitü Sosyal (“Institute Social”) together with the NÛN Foundation for Education and Culture — chaired by Esra Albayrak, who is the daughter of President Erdoğan and the wife of former Treasury Minister Berat Albayrak. Albayrak delivered the forum’s opening address, arguing that the international system “has reached the limits of knowledge produced in cities such as Paris, London, New York and Amsterdam” and listing Gaza alongside Istanbul as a future capital of global wisdom.
The forum’s institutional partners included the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies and the Centre for Islamic Studies (İSAM) — a body housed under Turkey’s state-linked Diyanet Foundation, the religious authority that oversees more than 90,000 mosques across Turkey.
A Columbia Professor on Stage with a Convicted Terrorist
The forum’s marquee Palestine roundtable, “Settler Colonialism and the Ruse of Independence,” seated Columbia University professor Joseph Massad alongside Sami Al-Arian — who was deported from the United States after pleading guilty to funneling funds to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization.
Since arriving in Turkey, Al-Arian has been installed as founding director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, an institution founded by the İlim Yayma Foundation, whose board of trustees is chaired by Erdoğan's son Bilal. In October 2024, CIGA convened a conference whose opening remarks were delivered by U.S.-designated Hamas terrorist Usama Hamdan, who praised “unapologetic jihad.” Al-Arian himself has publicly celebrated the October 7 attack as a moment when “Israel was hit in its own territory” and called for “confrontations with Zionists in every corner of the world.”
The Panel’s Two Targets: Israel and the United States
Footage of the Palestine roundtable, published on the forum’s official YouTube channel, shows the panel openly endorsing the elimination of the Jewish state and attacking the foundations of the United States. Moderator Iskander Abbasi opened by introducing Joseph Massad as a professor at “Columbia University in the belly of the beast” — a reference to the United States that Massad did not contest.
Massad, who teaches Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia, has long drawn scrutiny for his writings on Israel. In October 2023, he notoriously described the Hamas-led massacre as 'awesome,' 'astounding,' and a 'stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.'
During the panel, Massad told the audience that the U.S. is celebrating 250 years of “the first white supremacist colony as if it was a system that enabled freedom,” and that only “the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand” have ever achieved real independence — placing the country where he holds a tenured Ivy League appointment alongside the settler-colonial regimes he condemns.
Sami Al-Arian went further, calling explicitly for the destruction of Israel:
“The only acceptable solution from my standpoint is the dismantlement of all these Zionist structures. So all these things about two state — that’s all to me, we’re way beyond that.” He defined the United States itself as illegitimate from its founding — “From the very beginning the United States was a project for hegemony. First across North America, then across the Western Hemisphere, and eventually across the world” — and dismissed the U.S. terror laws under which he was convicted as colonial instruments, saying authorities “use and they create these tools… they created the Patriot Act.”
The panel’s moderator then outlined what he framed as the four-part South African model for “defeating” Israel: civil resistance, “armed resistance inside the country,” “armed resistance outside of the country,” and global BDS. Al-Arian responded: “We have to have all of these.” In other words, on a stage shared with a sitting Columbia University professor, a convicted PIJ terrorist publicly endorsed “armed struggle” against Israel — inside and outside its borders — as the path forward.
Antisemitic & Alleged Terror-Linked Speakers
Sharing the plenary with Massad and Al-Arian was Houria Bouteldja, the French-Algerian activist whose record includes referring to “panicked Jewish elites,” dismissing the murder of French schoolteacher Sarah Halimi in because she was “a colonizer,” and declaring “Mohamed Merah is me and I am him” — referring to the terrorist who murdered three children at a Toulouse Jewish school in 2012.
The same roundtable with Al-Arian also featured journalist Jeremy Scahill, who told the Istanbul audience that “being pro-Palestinian is not very different from being pro-humanity.” Other speakers listed in the official booklet included Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, who has refused to condemn Hamas and whose Macquarie University research grant was temporarily suspended in 2025 amid controversy over her public statements.
During the conference, Al Jazeera Centre for Studies was represented on stage by Arafat Madi Shoukri, who delivered remarks on behalf of the network. Jewish Onliner previously reported that Shoukri was photographed alongside the former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Shoukri was designated by Israel in 2013 as one of Hamas’s main operatives in Europe. He also previously directed the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR), which was also banned in 2013 by the Israeli Ministry of Justice, which identified it as serving as Hamas’ representative in Europe. Shoukri told the Istanbul audience that Al Jazeera's "institutional approach" was to "provide greater space for underrepresented voices."
Enstitü Sosyal: The Quiet Organizer
The forum’s lead organizer, Enstitü Sosyal, describes itself as a “think tank engaged in research and development for public benefit.” Its publications include commentary defending campus anti-Israel protests as a struggle against “anti-Palestinianism,” and at the forum its General Coordinator İpek Coşkun Armağan framed Western interventions in “Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine” as continuations of colonialism.
The forum’s accompanying Arabic-language coverage in Al Jazeera praised Erdoğan’s slogan “the world is bigger than five” as a “challenge to the mono-centric hierarchy of the modern world,” and Al Jazeera’s research arm confirmed it co-organized the gathering — placing the Qatari state media network in a direct partnership role.
Enstitü Sosyal’s co-host, the NÛN Foundation, operates a network of private schools serving students from ages 3 to 18 under an educational model that promotes “national and spiritual values” — placing Esra Albayrak’s foundation not only at the head of the forum but also at the center of a youth-pipeline institution shaping the next generation of Turkish students.
A Three-Phase Project Through 2030
The forum is not a one-off. According to its closing statement, organizers launched a multi-year roadmap continuing in 2028 (”Decolonizing Institutions and Organizations”) and 2030 (”Decolonization in Practice”). With Erdoğan’s daughter as its public face, a U.S.-convicted PIJ figure as its star Palestine speaker, a sitting Columbia professor lending it Ivy League legitimacy, and state-broadcaster TRT World serving as its publicity arm, the World Decolonization Forum seems intent on becoming the academic vehicle of choice for the Turkish state’s effort to mainstream the rhetoric — and the personnel — of jihadist-aligned activism inside global universities.
The forum’s organizers describe their goal as building “new centres of wisdom.” The evidence from Istanbul suggests they have failed to achieve this goal.