The Guardian, UK
Sept 23 2006
Justice on trial
Maureen Freely on the threat to freedom of expression faced by
Turkey’s writers
Saturday September 23, 2006
The Guardian
At 9.15, all is quiet outside the Istanbul courthouse. By half past,
film crews have begun to congregate around the entrance. Now two
buses veer around the corner, disgorging 60 or so riot police. As
they take position, so, too, do the demonstrators. Their banners
bear the name of the author/academic/journalist who is to be tried
this morning. Whatever the alleged offence – insulting Turkishness,
alienating the public from military service, failing to protect the
memory of Ataturk – they will brand this defendant as a traitor,
an imperialist and a spy.
By now the corridors of the courthouse are teeming with writers,
scholars, lawyers and activists, here to support the right to free
expression. Many will have faced similar charges, or soon will do.
Since Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted under Article 301 last year for
openly discussing the killing of a million Armenians in 1915, as
many as 80 others have been prosecuted for expressing their views on
this and other taboo subjects. Forty-five more will face judges by
the end of the year. Suddenly there is a voice of authority. "Make
way for the lawyers!" The crowd falls silent as five men in flowing
robes cut through the crowd.
Their leader is Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer with ultra-nationalist
links who rose to fame last year by bringing charges against Pamuk.
He was back in court this week, this time to accuse the bestselling
novelist Elif Shafak. Her "crime" is to have allowed a fictitious
character, in her latest novel The Bastard of Istanbul, to use the
word genocide while discussing his Armenian ancestors, but Kerincsiz
and the Unity of Jurists have probably had their eyes on her since
she took part in (and eloquently defended) a controversial conference
on the Armenian question in Istanbul last year. They almost succeeded
in banning it; when a loophole allowed it to be moved to a new venue,
they called upon all of Turkey’s patriots to gather outside and vent
their anger.
Only a handful turned up, but there were enough to fill a TV screen.
Kerincsiz and his associates went on to initiate a string of other
prosecutions, and they have attended the trials of all those famous
enough to attract a television crew. Assaults on foreign and Turkish
observers inside and outside the courtroom have been widely (and
sometimes admiringly) reported, as have their insults.
Because there has been little effort to rein them in, it is assumed
they are linked to a nationalist clique inside the state bureacracies
that opposes Turkish entry into the EU: whatever the economic benefits
of accession might be, it would also result in a rolling back of
state power and a loosening of its draconian controls on cultural and
political expression. In his speeches to camera, Kerincsiz strikes a
more populist note, inviting viewers to remember the Treaty of Sèvres,
in which the Allied powers sought to parcel out the remains of the
Ottoman powers among the victors of the first world war. The EU,
he warns, is the old threat in new clothing.
That his words resonate for many in Turkey is evident from the
nationalist monuments that grow in number every day. But Kerincsiz does
not owe his media profile to the electorate: the ultra-nationalist MHP
(Nationalist Action Party), of which he was once a branch president,
lost all its seats in the National Assembly at the last election. It
does, however, have a long history of helping those in power with
dirty tricks. What many defendants dread most is not a judge handing
down a prison sentence (so far none have done so). What they fear
are calls that have been heard to "silence this traitor forever".
October 5 is going to be a logistical headache for the
ultranationalists, because no fewer than five new trials involving
eight defendants are set to begin then. The one attracting most
press interest is against the journalist Ipek Califlar. In her recent
bestselling biography of Latife Hanim, who was briefly married to Kemal
Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, she repeated an anecdote about
Ataturk escaping from would-be assassins by dressing up in women’s
clothing. Now she and her editor are being sued for insulting Ataturk’s
memory. This is sure to cast a shadow – perhaps a deliberate one –
over the EU Commission’s progress report, due on October 24.
High points from later in the season include a second prosecution
of novelist and columnist Perihan Magden (prosecuted last spring
for writing in defence of a conscientious objector) and a fourth
(possibly even a fifth) prosecution of Hrant Dink, the editor of
the pioneering Turkish-Armenian weekly, Agos. So far, the threat
of prosecution has had no discernable effect on what writers write,
and publishers publish. When I spoke this week to Muge Sokmen, who
is Shafak’s editor and the joint head of Turkish PEN, she reminded me
that Turkey has 1,000 independent publishers, 400 of whom are active.
She pointed out that the most aggressively prosecuted novelists and
journalists are also the most widely read. "This must mean we have
the Turkish public on our side," she said.
In the press, too, there is growing pressure to have the law changed,
she says. "Each new case shows how absurd the law is, how it is
open to mis-interpretation and abuse." But so far, the government
has shown little interest in reform. This may be because it hopes
the prosecutions will decrease in number and variety once there is a
body of case law. Or it may be because the prime minister has himself
pressed charges against several cartoonists who portrayed him as a
dog or a giraffe.
Where will it all end? It’s too early to say. But in the short term,
expect to see more writers travelling through the courts. And pray
that no one else gets hurt.
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