Financial Times, UK
Oct 12 2006
Why the writers refuse to be silenced
Perihan Magden, a Turkish novelist and journalist, appeared in an
Istanbul court earlier this month accused of the slightly surreal
crime of "alienating the people against military service" because she
defended a young man’s right to be a conscientious objector.
As she entered the court she was attacked by a small crowd of
demonstrators shouting insults and causing a commotion that at least
guaranteed television news coverage.
It was a scene that has become familiar outside Turkish courtrooms. A
series of prosecutions of writers and journalists, for things they
said or wrote, has attracted bigots and xenophobes to each hearing,
adding a sharp political edge to the occasions and turning them into
spectacles that would be considered in some other countries to be
bringing the law into disrepute.
Ms Magden’s case was adjourned to another hearing in late July. She
faces three years in jail if she is convicted. "I cannot believe I am
being prosecuted," she said in court.
Her alleged crime was to write an opinion piece in a magazine in
which she defended the notion of conscientious objection to military
service, arguing in favour of a young man who was refusing to wear
the uniform during his conscription because it was against his
beliefs.
The Turkish military, a powerful institution with a long history of
meddling in politics and silencing its critics, objected to the
article, arguing that it could undermine the standing of the armed
forces in the public mind and perhaps encourage youngsters to refuse
military service, which is compulsory for men.
The notion is absurd in a country where the armed forces are, on the
whole, highly regarded, and where military service is seen as a badge
of honour. But a prosecutor filed a case against Ms Magden, and it is
now being played out in court.
If Ms Magden thinks the case is absurd, many Turks would probably
agree. So would the European Union, which Turkey wishes to join. The
EU has put freedom of expression high on its list of issues Turkey
must address if any progress on entry is to be made.
In particular, the EU wants Turkey to change or abolish Article 301
of the revised penal code passed by this government, which is seen as
a license for any prosecutor to pursue a case against an individual
based on the flimsiest evidence.
The furore that invariably surrounds the prosecution of freedom of
expression cases in Turkey does immense damage to the country’s image
at home and abroad.
This raises the intriguing question of why Turkey, which is a modern
democracy with a pluralist media and no shortage of opinions on every
conceivable subject, still puts writers and journalists on trial, and
why such a powerful country is still so seemingly terrified of
wayward, unorthodox, or subversive yet non-violent opinion.
One reason, commentators say, is because the legal system tolerates
it. Although a constitution drafted by the military top brass and
imposed after a coup d’etat in 1980 has been heavily amended, its
legacy has been pernicious and authoritarian.
Even today, commentators and diplomats say, vaguely worded articles
allow for severe restrictions on freedom of expression. These
restrictions are less draconian than a decade ago, but they are still
effective in making a writer think twice before putting an opinion
down on paper.
Much of the impetus for prosecutors to pursue writers who might be
considered to have insulted Turkey in some way comes from the
hard-line, xenophobic nationalist extremes of Turkish politics.
This is not a large group but it is exceptionally noisy perhaps
because it feels itself alienated from the modern trend of Turkish
politics and it uses the legal system to announce and pursue its
grievances.
"Nationalists are feeling besieged," says Ali Tekin, a political
scientist at Bilkent University. "When they see an avenue to express
their frustration, they seize it."
A second reason is that, although debate on contested historical
questions is now more open in Turkey than it was five years ago, some
subjects are still regarded by some Turks as taboo, such as the fate
of Ottoman Armenians, the plight of the Kurds, or the continuing
usefulness of Kemalism, the republican nationalist ideology
bequeathed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey. Those who
would silence debate on these issues say European countries do the
same thing.
They point to Austria, which jailed David Irving a British historian
who denied the Nazi Holocaust for three years.
That is a more severe sentence than any handed down in recent months
by a Turkish court. The saving grace of Turkish cases is that many
are either withdrawn or collapse under the weight of contradictions.
A third, and perhaps more important, reason why freedom of expression
is so sensitive in Turkey is that it is a country where opinions are
important, especially if they challenge received wisdom.
The columnist Cengiz Candar has described Turkish intellectuals as
"iconoclasts in a conservative society", holding Turkey to account on
behalf of the world. There is a vast amount of opinion in Turkish
newspapers, sometimes at the expense of news, but it plays a vital
role in shaping public opinion.
Orhan Pamuk, the novelist whose trial last December on a charge of
"insulting Turkishness" led to an international outcry, recently made
a similar point about writers.
He told a conference of PEN, the international writers’ organisation,
that part of a writer’s task was to raise forbidden subjects "purely
because they wereforbidden".
In his PEN lecture published in the New York Review of Books, from
which these quotations are taken, he recalled a visit to Istanbul in
the mid-1980s by the playwrights Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter, to
show support for jailed writers in Turkey.
Things are not that bad today. But Mr Pamuk observed that for a
writer to self-censor himself simply to avoid upsetting anybody was
"a bit like smuggling forbidden goods through customs" and was
shaming and degrading.
He has refused to be silenced in his own writings. Other Turkish
writers, as Ms Magden shows, feel the same way.