EU Criticizes Turkish Law on "Insulting Turkishness"
Brussels Journal, Belgium
July 19 2006
EU Enlargment commissioner Olli Rehn demands that Turkey amend
its laws on curbing free expression, in particular Article 301 of
its penal code. Recently, Turkish courts upheld a prison sentence
against a Turkish editor, Hrant Dink. The Turkish citizen, Elif
Shafak – author of Father and Bastard – also faces renewed charges of
"insulting Turkishness" under the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish
Criminal Code, despite the earlier dismissal of the case.
Shafak’s case has already been fraught with complications. The
original trial in June of Elif Shafak and her publisher (Semih Sokmen
of Metis Publishing House) declared that, after the publication of
her bestseller Father and Bastard, there was no evidence to prosecute
her on the charges of "publicly insulting Turkishness."
A subsequent trial brought by The Unity of Jurists – led by the lawyer,
Kemal Kerincsiz – overturned the dismissal. It was in Istanbul’s
Seventh High Criminal Court that the original decision to dismiss the
case was reversed. After that ruling, the case file was passed back
to the original court of prosecution, Beyoglu Republic Prosecutors’
Office.
The charges of "publicly insulting Turkishness" stem from the notorious
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. After previously reviewing the
trial of Orhan Pamuk, it is clear that there is now an extensive list
of journalists and writers whose freedom of expression continues to
be intimidated and suppressed.
In a reaction to an earlier article of mine, comparing the Pamuk trial
to that of Italian writer Oriana Fallaci, who is being prosecuted in
Italy because she "defamed Islam," the weblog Parenthetical Remarks
writes:
What’s curious about McConalogue’s article is the way in which
he couches Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s famous battle with the
government over charges that he had "insulted Turkishness" by public
ally mentioning the Armenian genocide and Turkey’s treatment of
the Kurds.
McConalogue would like to draw a parallel between Pamuk and Italian
journalist Oriana Fallaci, who has been charged with defaming Islam
in Italy. To this end, he chooses to see Pamuk as somehow having run
afoul of a Muslim status quo in Turkey.
The only problem is that Pamuk’s case doesn’t demonstrate this in
the least. Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which prohibits
insulting Turkishness and the Turkish military, was dreamed up not
by Muslim extremists, but by the militant secularist diciples of
Kemal Ataturk. The people behind the prosecutions of Pamuk and other
writers are nationalists who adhere to a vision of the Turkish state
that is anathema to radical Islamists in Turkey and beyond.
I agree with McConalogue on the importance of free expression, but
there is absolutely no connection between Pamuk and Fallaci. The
juxtaposition appears to be based on a rather lazy assumption that
because Turkey is a Muslim country, to run afoul of its government
must be to run afoul of Islam. Nothing could be further from the case.
I disagree with the blogger’s critique since in my view, the cases of
both author’s are trials of intimidating/suppressing free expression
through religious forces. I am in agreement with the critic’s issue
of defending free expression and I must apologise for where I did
not clarify the points I made on the Turkish problem in my article.
The basic contention of the criticism seems to be this: Fallaci’s
case concerns the suppression of free expression based on religion
following the author’s vehement attacks on Islam, whereas Pamuk’s case
concerns the suppression of free expression based on nationalists in
the political sphere following his claims of past atrocities by the
Turkish state and its military power. This leads my critic to suggest
that "there is absolutely no connection between Pamuk and Fallaci."
I attempt to keep myself aware of lazy assumptions that I am likely
to make of cultures that I do not belong to. However, Turkey is a
predominantly Muslim country and in assessing its government’s policy
to literary cases, I would assess the geo-political culture in which
its laws are conceived. That is to say, I take a step back from the
immediate legislative developments since June 2005 i.e. Article 301.
(Certainly, I would agree, I may have taken too many steps back in
this article). I am aware that Pamuk is being prosecuted under the
banner of Article 301 and Fallaci is being prosecuted for the rather
odd charge of defaming Islam – both of which are very different
charges and circumstances – but they are essentially a part of the
same trend. They are both concerned with free expression and Islam.
More to the point, both sets of recourse to the law are nothing more
than quick-fix efficient methods of intimidating author’s on matters
relating to religion.
At the centre of my critic’s remark is a passion for intricate
historical divisions in the Turkish political topography at the cost of
forgetting the generalized patterns of social and political analysis
(although I can appreciate that it is important to examine this
immediate evidence before approaching more generalized patterns). My
own analytical framework, for quite some time, has been based upon
Michael Mann’s legendary three volumes of The Sources of Social
Power, which assesses the inter-related historical developments of
ideological, economic, military and political spheres in modern social
and political powers. So when I took to analysing Pamuk’s case, it
was not limited to the military/political divisions in modern Turkey –
I understood religion to play a significant part in underpinning the
nationalist instinct in Turkish society. In short, I believe something
deeper underpins that free-floating secular nationalism. Of course,
this certainly remains a debatable issue.
Yet, Article 301, should we forget, refers to "publicly insulting
Turkishness." Are we then assuming that Turkishness, for Turks, is
now a non-Islamic concept? I can’t help but think that "Turkishness"
in Pamuk’s claims was devoted to a provocation over two issues
irrevocably related to Islamic politics: a discomfort over the
Armenian genocide and the persecution of the Kurds. Thus, a case on the
Turkish nationalist-military-political framework overreaching into the
private realm is very likely to signify a general case of religious
intrusion into free expression. As for the claims of "secularists"
and "secularism", this is a difficult concept to talk of in all
cultures, including in my home country of parochial Christian-centric
islanders. Accordingly, I find it difficult to think of the Turkish
state as "anathema" to the Islamic culture (radical or non-radical)
it is responsible for governing.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
