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Freedom of speech under continuing attack
in Turkey
27.10.2006
By Sinan Ikinci |
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October 27, 2006
Last week, a court in Istanbul began hearings
against the Turkish publisher, editors and
translator of the book Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky
and Edward S. Herman. The charges related to Article
301 and Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
Article 301 is a highly controversial law that has
been used to penalise many writers, journalists,
publishers and even translators and editors. Amnesty
International has called for the repeal of Article
301, which was first introduced as part of the
legislative reforms of June 1, 2005, and poses a
direct threat to the fundamental right to freedom of
expression.
The article states that anyone who “publicly
denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey be punishable by
imprisonment of between six months and three years.”
If the public “denigration” is directed against
Turkey’s government, the judicial institutions of
the state, the military or security organisations,
punishment is up to two years. One of the most
recent cases involving Article 301 involved the
Turkish writer and recent Nobel Literature Prize
winner Orhan Pamuk, who was charged for speaking out
openly on the massacre of Armenians by Turkey at the
beginning of the twentieth century.
The case launched against Chomsky’s publishers in
Turkey, the Aram Yayincilik Publishing House, its
owner Fatih Tas, editors Omer Faruk Kurhan and Lutfu
Taylan Tosun and translator Ender Abadoglu accuses
them of openly humiliating Turkish identity, the
Turkish Republic and parliament, as well as
spreading public hatred and enmity by publishing
this book. If convicted, the defendants face jail
sentences of between one-and-a-half and six years.
In an article dated August 10, 2006, posted on the
web site zmag.org, Aram Yayincilik explains that
according to the indictment, the “crime” committed
was as follows: in the updated introduction of the
2002 edition of the book, writers Chomksy and Herman
make a comparison between US mass media coverage of
the atrocities committed by Serbia against Albanians
and by Turkey against the Kurds in the 1990s. While
it was estimated that approximately 2,000-3,000 died
in Kosovo, Turkey’s war against the Kurds cost the
lives of 30,000 with between 2 million and 3 million
Kurds forced to leave the country. In spite of this,
the [American] mass media gave widespread coverage
to the atrocities in Kosovo, frequently using the
terms “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.”
Yet, when it came to Turkey—a client state and NATO
ally of the US—the Turkish atrocities against the
Kurds were given very little coverage.
It seems that the Turkish prosecutor did not even
try to challenge the content of the claims made in
the preface, nor was he bothered by the fact that
the claims were in the first place not even directed
against Turkey but against double standards in the
US media.
In their book, Chomsky and Herman state: “
‘Genocide’ is an invidious word that officials apply
readily to cases of victimisation in enemy states,
but rarely if ever to similar or worse cases of
victimisation by the United States itself or allied
regimes. Thus, Saddam Hussein and Iraq have been
U.S. targets in the 1990s, whereas Turkey has been
an ally and client of the United States—a major arms
supplier to Turkey—as it engaged in a severe ethnic
cleansing of Kurds during those years. We find that
Turkey’s treatment of Kurds was in no way less
murderous than Iraq’s treatment of Iraqi Kurds,
albeit according to then U.S. Ambassador Peter
Galbraith, Turkey only ‘represses,’ while Iraq
engages in ‘genocide.’ ”
The prosecutor regards that such a critical comment
about government policy, which is common in a
traditional bourgeois democracy, constitutes
denigration of the Turkish identity and the
republic.
According to New Anatolian, an English-language
newspaper, “Fatih Tas’s attorney Ozcan Kilic said in
the hearing that the authors of the book are still
alive and therefore can stand trial.”
In 2002, Tas was also charged for publishing
political essays by Chomsky that allegedly
constituted propaganda against the unity of the
Turkish state. Chomsky himself travelled to Istanbul
to lend his support to Tas, and the court acquitted
the publisher. After his acquittal, Tas told the
BBC, “If Chomsky hadn’t been here we wouldn’t have
expected such a verdict.” It seems that the
defendants are once more planning to force the court
to try a world-famous academic like Chomsky and put
the court in a difficult situation by garnering
world attention on the case.
In his defence, Abadoglu said that as a translator
he was only doing his job in accurately translating
the book from English into Turkish, and maintained
that a translator cannot be held responsible for the
views of authors. According to the New Anatolian
news report, Abadoglu said, “In a similar way, the
views of French parliamentarians who are supporting
the Armenian genocide claims were translated and
published in newspapers. There are no cases filed
against these translators. Hence, I think
translators can’t be held responsible.”
The editors also defended themselves with similar
arguments, saying that they only edited the book,
and their duty is to ensure that the quality of the
translation is good and the book contains no
material mistakes. They also told the court that the
book contains nothing that constitutes a criminal
offence.
For his part, Tosun said that he edited the book in
question and tried to ensure the translation was
fair. Tosun rejected the charges, saying that he
couldn’t see any point in a book that would
constitute a crime. In addition, Omer Faruk Kurhan
emphasised that the way in which Article 301 has
been interpreted assumes that the state and its
institutions cannot be criticised in any form
whatsoever.
After the hearing, Tas told the New Anatolian, “An
editor is standing trial for the first time in this
case. Hence, the writer, publisher, translator and
editor of a book are standing trial on the same
charges. We shouldn’t be surprised in the future to
see charges filed against the distributor, bookstore
owner and readers.”
In his own statement on the lawsuit, Noam Chomsky
rejected the accusations made by the Turkish state
prosecutor and his failure to address the
substantial issues raised in his book. “The
indictment raises no question about the accuracy of
the evidence reported, or our treatment of it, or
its appropriateness in the context of the
discussion. Nor has there been a serious question
raised elsewhere. The claim of the prosecution,
then, reduces to invoking the principle that
appropriate and significant truths are unacceptable
when the state authorities object to them. There
should be no need for further comment.”
In August 2005, a lawsuit was also brought against
the Aram Yayincilik publishing house for the Turkish
translation of the book Spoils of War: The Human
Cost of American Arms Trade by John Tirman, director
of international studies at MIT. This lawsuit was
also launched under Article 301 together with Law
No. 5816, which protects the moral personality of
the founder of the modern state of Turkey, Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk. The prosecutor has demanded jail
sentences of between two and seven-and-a-half years
for those charged in connection with this case.
Since Article 301 came into force, more than 100
writers, journalists, publishers, translators,
editors and intellectuals have been brought before
the courts. Cases involving renowned intellectuals,
such as Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk or
Elif Safak, have received some coverage by the
mainstream bourgeois media, but many more
lesser-known cases go unnoticed.
The European Union has voiced some criticism of
Article 301, but mainly in high-profile cases. In
addition, conservative European media outlets and
politicians are using the issue of human rights
violations to mobilise resentment against Turkey and
its attempt to join the EU. The US has remained
silent about the Article 301 trials. This is no
surprise because the very forces behind such
censorship are the right-wing nationalists and
military circles, which are traditional allies of
the US in its bloody conquest under the banner of
“democracy and freedom” in the Middle East.
Deniz Baykal, leader of the secular “leftist”
Republican People’s Party (CHP), the biggest
opposition faction in Turkish parliament, acting as
a mouthpiece for the military against the moderate
Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP)
government, has no such qualms about making clear
where he stands. He openly opposes changes to
Article 301.
wsws org
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan".
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan but
unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is
banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is
a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
First world war
massacres | Related
issue:
Armenian Genocide by Turkish Muslims against
Christians
Turkey faces international pressure to recognise
that more than 1 million Armenians were massacred
during a 1915 campaign of ethnic cleansing by
Ottoman Turks. Turkish officials claim that most
deaths were caused by hunger and disease.
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