World Socialist Web Site, MI
Dec 7 2007
Turkey: Assaults on freedom of expression continue
By Sinan Ikinci
7 December 2007
Ragip Zarakolu, owner of the Belge Publishing House and chairman of
the Committee for Publishing Freedom, is facing up to three years in
prison for publishing a book by a British-Armenian author, George
Jerjian, entitled The Truth Will Set Us Free. The book deals with the
mass deportations of Armenians in 1915 and chronicles the life of
Jerjian’s Armenian grandmother who survived the genocide with the
help of an Ottoman soldier.
The court case against publisher Zarakolu was opened last year in
April and he is being charged under the notorious Article 301. Dozens
of writers, journalists, artists, academics, publishers, translators
and others have been tried under Article 301 and court cases against
well-known authors such as the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and
Elif Safak and journalist Hrant Dink attracted considerable media
interest in Turkey and internationally. However, non-celebrity
victims’ court cases have generally gone unnoticed.
In the latest 301 case the prosecutor claims that Jerjian’s book
`insults’ the memory of Turkey’s founder Kemal Ataturk by portraying
his close advisors as the people responsible for the mass deportation
of Armenians.
At a court hearing on October 3 a letter written by author Jerjian
was presented to the court. It has been reported Jerjian initially
considered coming to Turkey to attend the hearing, but then changed
his mind due to the high risk of being attacked.
This risk is not imagined. In many other Article 301-related cases
fascist groups, generally accompanied by Maoist-Kemalist members of
the misnamed Workers Party, have organised demonstrations denouncing
the accused as traitors, spies and `missionary children.’ They harass
defendants and their legal representatives in and outside the court
buildings and have physically attacked them.
In addition there are growing indications that the Turkish police are
directly involved in the persecution of dissidents and
oppositionists. Clues have emerged linking the police directly to the
murder of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, a victim
of a 301 case who was shot dead outside his bilingual newspaper’s
Istanbul office this year by a fascist assassin. There are also
allegations implicating the police in the bloody killings of three
Christian missionaries in Malatya.
Zarakolu and his late wife Ayse Zarakolu, who died in 2002, as well
as authors, editors and translators working for his publishing house,
have faced frequent legal harassment for publishing books on minority
and human rights in Turkey.
In a climate of nationalism and chauvinism spearheaded by the Turkish
military and fuelled by the bourgeois parties (both right-wing and
the nominally `left-wing’) and the news media, state prosecutor
offices and police departments, which are dominated by fascistic and
Islamist elements, continue to level charges against writers,
journalists, artists, academics and publishers with dissident views.
Recently a prosecutor launched an investigation targeting a book
written by British writer Richard Dawkins, an expert in evolutionary
biology, entitled The God Delusion. The aim of the investigation is
to establish whether the book incites religious hatred. The inquiry
was initiated following a complaint that the book defamed `sacred
values.’ This investigation is a good example of the utterly
hypocritical attitude of the ruling Islamists with regard to freedom
of expression.
The Islamist AKP (Justice and Development Party) government has also
been conducting a virtual war to expel evolution theory from Turkish
schools. There is growing pressure on teachers to teach creationism
alongside the theory of evolution and some teachers don’t teach
evolution at all.
Just two months ago, the Kurdish nationalist Gundem newspaper was
closed for a month for publishing two articles authored by the
outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) leader Murat Karayilan. Under
the Anti-Terrorism Law the daily was accused of spreading PKK
propaganda. This was the forth closure of the paper this year.
A recent study on media freedom across Europen entitled `Goodbye to
Freedom?’ published by the Association of European Journalists (AEJ),
gave some idea of the extent of the campaign against basic rights in
Turkey. The report concludes: `In 2006 a total of 293 people faced
legal action based on the country’s illiberal laws on free
expression. In some cases the army itself has brought prosecutions
against journalists who investigated or criticized the military’s
involvement in politics.’
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