Tortured minds
By Jean Rafferty
Sunday Herald, UK
13 March 2005
The fluidity in Beyoglu No 2 criminal court in Istanbul borders on
chaos. The judge is away training for the introduction of the Turkish
penal code, his deputy is sick, and it seems nobody wants to take on
the case of dissident writer and publisher, Ragip Zarakolu. Why would
they? There is the Turkish government to answer to if you come up with
the wrong verdict, and world opinion to contend with, in the shape
of eight international observers, a chap from the British Consulate,
two German cameramen and assorted supporters and reporters clogging up
the corridors. Not to mention the wider opinion they represent. For
a government which desperately wants to join the European Union,
the Turks have an unfortunate penchant for arresting their political
opponents. It doesn’t take much to put you on the wrong side of the
law here. One of the charges against Ragip Zarakolu is of insulting the
memory of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state, who died
in 1938. In mature democracies such as our own, where Blair-baiting
and royalty-ribbing are the media’s favourite bloodsports, half the
nation’s press would be in Pentonville if such a charge existed.
“Can you imagine if there was a law like that about Churchill?” asks
Alexis Krikorian of the International Publishers Association (IPA).
We are in Istanbul to see Zarakolu tried for instigating racial hatred
“in a way dangerous for public security”. He has dared to suggest
that the Kurdish people in Iraq might have the right to determine
their own fate.
On this same day in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Professor Fikret
Baskaya is also standing trial for accusing Turkey of being a “torture
state” in a book written initially in the early 1990s and reprinted
in 2003. A team of international observers is watching his trial too.
Zarakolu’s article in a radical daily newspaper criticised the
Turkish government for suggesting that the Iraqi Kurds’ desire to
form a state was justification for the war. In the end the government
refused to support the war, which makes this whole process somewhat
surreal. Zarakolu is now in court for a political position that the
government itself supports.
A brave judge is eventually prevailed upon to hear the case and those
who can squash into the small courtroom. Its wood veneer-panelled walls
are reminscent of council houses in Glasgow’s east end, and there
is none of the pomp of a British court – nor any of the jury. Judge
and prosecutor sit together under a portrait of Ataturk . They wear
cheap-looking duster coats with red stand-up collars; the defence
lawyer’s collar is green and maroon. They could be janitors from
opposing high schools.
But for all their utilitarian appearance, the Turkish courts are far
more deadly in approach than our own. There are currently 60 writers
facing trial there, including Austrian journalist, Sandra Bakutz, who
simply went to Turkey in February to cover the trial of 100 left-wing
activists. She is charged with membership of a banned organisation
and could face up to 15 years in prison. Other “criminals” include
cartoonist Musa Kart, whose caricature of the Turkish prime minister
with a cat’s head earned him a 5000 lira fine.
It is hard not to see the proceedings in Beyoglu’s court as a
caricature of the law. The judge clearly knows nothing about the case
and has to be given all the details. Ragip Zarakolu stands alone in
the dock and reads a prepared speech. “Being against a war can never
be classed as a crime. Criticising genocide can never be a crime
… I demand acquittal.”
Instead, he is offered postponement until May, even though his defence
lawyer points out that under the new penal code such a charge could
no longer be brought then. As the code comes in on April Fools’ Day,
perhaps the judge is wise not to accept that argument. It turns out
that Zarakolu’s co-defendant, the newspaper’s editor, should have
been in the dock with him, but with 300 charges outstanding against
him he’s had the good sense to abscond to Switzerland.
“It’s Kafkaesque,” says Zarakolu. “Just harassment. It’s like our story
of the wolf and the lamb at the riverside. The wolf says, ‘I will
eat you. You are making my water dirty.’ The lamb replies, ‘That’s
impossible. You are upstream of me. It is only you who could dirty
my water.’ The wolf says, ‘It’s not important. I want to eat you’.”
Ragip Zarakolu has spent a total of two years in prison, some of
it in isolation. His publishing house has been firebombed; he has
had constant financial struggles, but still he carries on, not just
writing his own articles but publishing and distributing radical
literature by others.
He was born in 1948 into the family of a high-ranking bureaucrat,
an intellectual whose liberal-mindedness – and membership of the
democratic party – led to his being sent away from Istanbul and into
the wilds of Anatolia. It was a form of banishment, a probationary
period to ensure his loyalty. The state-owned mansions that the family
lived in clearly provided only limited security.
In 1968, Turkey followed the student protest movement of most of
the Western world. Ragip too listened to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and
took part in sit-ins, but unlike many of his European and American
contemporaries, he never settled for Coca-Cola consumerism. In 1977,
he and his wife Ayse set up a publishing house to print the works
of independent thinkers. Their range included classic political
theorists such as Tom Paine and John Stuart Mill. They often used
foreign writers to say the things Turkish writers could not.
In the 1980s, after the military coup by General Kenan Evren, the
couple began publishing works by people who had been in prison. “They
were writing their poetry on little pieces of paper, which they sent
secretly, sewn into shirts and other things. Nearly half a million
were imprisoned in five years. A generation of university students
stayed there a long time. My wife and I thought it was very important
to get their voices to the outside. The military authorities thought
all the younger generation were terrorists but we wanted to show
their culture. We published poetry, novels, stories, reportage. Some
of them won awards.”
And some of them were sentenced to death. Turkey takes the written
word very seriously. Zarakolu and his wife were watched the whole
time, their phones tapped. Many other publishers couldn’t take the
pressure. They themselves closed their own publishing houses and
bookshops. Some people even burned books in their own homes. In the
first half of 2004 alone, 15 books were banned.
The Zarakolus did everything openly. Ragip was arrested in 1982;
Ayse two years later. She was tortured. During Ragip’s first prison
term, in 1973, he had learned what that meant through the stories
of fellow-prisoners. “They were hanging people by their hands, using
electric shocks, beating people on the soles of their feet. They also
tied people to the bed, making them stay there a week without going
to the toilet .”
During that period, Ragip Zarakolu collated the information he
received into a book, which was published in Belgium. This time
around he could only support his wife. Ayse was a remarkable woman
who was tried many times and won many humanitarian awards . In 1984,
she was arrested because she had given a job to a student who was
wanted by the police. They tortured her to find out where he was. She
refused to tell them – he was hiding in her mother’s house. “She was
a very courageous woman,” says Ragip. “She always managed not to go
into depression or helplessness. She felt good because she could do
something against power. She felt solidarity with suffering people.”
In 2002, Ayse died of cancer. Her husband was devastated, unable to
speak at her funeral. “I lost half of my existence,” he says. “We
shared everything.” Ayse’s coffin was carried by a group of Kurdish
women, who approached Zarakolu and asked if they could do so.
The “Kurdish question” is one of the country’s most contentious
issues. State repression of the 12 million-strong Kurdish population’s
language and culture resulted in bloody civil war during the 1980s
and 1990s . Both Zarakolus had spoken out openly about human rights
abuses, and about the genocide of a million Armenians from 1915
till the establishment of the Turkish state in 1923. “Everywhere men
carry the coffins,” says Ragip. “But the women said, ‘She gave a very
important struggle for us.’ The Kurdish women carried her coffin a
long way. It was a very hard burden.”
Moved by their gesture, the Zarakolus’ older son, Deniz, made an
emotional speech at the graveside. “I think Kurdish women will be
free some day,” he said. “And they will not forget my mother.”
In Turkey, 40 days is the traditional period of mourning. The
anti-terror team waited 40 days after Deniz spoke out; then they came
to the family home and took him away for interrogation. H e had said
the unforgivable: that Kurdish people might one day be free.
Deniz Zarakolu was acquitted only after legal reforms were
introduced. In recent years, in its bid to make itself acceptable to
Europe, Turkey has been making piecemeal amendments to its laws. These
do not impress the international observers who came to Istanbul.
“What good is a law if it’s not implemented?” asks Alexis Krikorian
of IPA. “In December Ragip Zarakolu was acquitted before the
State Security Court. As soon as he was acquitted he was charged
again. That’s why we’re back again.”
“Turkey keeps saying, ‘We’re a young nation. We need time.’ But
they’ve had a lot of time,” says Eugene Schoulgin of International PEN,
the worldwide writers’ organisation.
The irony is that many observers believe human rights are just an
excuse for the major European nations to keep Turkey out of the
European Union . “They can’t let Turkey in,” insists Professor Hasan
Unal of Ankara’s Bilkent University. “It’s too big, too alien. Once
you let Turkey in you’ll be moving your borders to Iran and Iraq. They
should keep Turkey as a buffer state.”
By the year 2020, Turkey’s population, now 72 million and growing at a
rate of one million a year, would be the biggest in Europe, giving the
country unprecedented influence. Would France and Germany countenance
this? Behind closed doors the diplomatic minuet goes on. Last Sunday
there were alarming scenes of police brutality in Istanbul during a
demonstration for International Women’s Day. Masked police arrested
57 people but it was thei r behaviour that was questioned in the
world’s press.
When Europe’s ministers met the Turkish foreign minister in Ankara on
Monday he assured them that the police would be investigated. They
assured him they were sure that they would. It was cosy, stately if
not statesmanlike, and utterly impenetrable. “They’re melting all
the criticisms into some kind of diplomatic mish-mash,” says Eugene
Schoulgin of International PEN. “It makes it impossible to know what
goes on behind the curtains. The public will never know. That’s what
worries writers and publishers.”
While in Istanbul, Schoulgin attended a dinner for the European
Ambassador, Hansjoerg Kretschmer, thrown by the Marmara group, a
Turkish association including 200 important politicians, academics,
businessmen, generals, journalists. There were speeches and compliments
and empty formalities . Only at the end, did Schoulgin ask how it
was possible for the EU to accept a country with so many taboos, a
country which will accept no criticism of its policies on Armenians,
Kurds, the military, Cyprus or even its founder, Kemal Ataturk.
He got no real answers. Afterwards, many people said that he shouldn’t
ask such questions. “I said, ‘I have a feeling I stepped on everyone’s
toes at once.’ I laughed and they laughed too, but they didn’t
like it.”
In Ankara, Professor Fikret Baskaya was acquitted. Many observers
thought the verdict had been decided before a word was said. But in
Istanbul Ragip Zarakolu has a further trial pending, on Wednesday,
and another book on the Armenian genocide coming out shortly. As it
coincides with the 90th anniversary, he does not expect publication
to go unnoticed.
Zarakolu is a generous-hearted man, a man who loves people, music,
laughter and travel. A man of inexplicable, ineradicable optimism. But
on one issue he is as rigid and inflexible as his opponents: “Whether
it’s a member of the European Community or not, Turkey must reform. The
citizens of Turkey demand their rights.”
Jean Rafferty went to Istanbul as a representative of Scottish PEN,
in conjunction with English PEN
13 March 2005