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December 16, 2005

Turkey: Islamist Regime Must Decide Author's Fate

The acclaimed Turkish novelist, 53-year old Orhan Pamuk, appeared in an Istanbul court (Sisli district criminal court) today to face accusations that he broke article 301 of the Turkish penal code, where disparaging the nation, in the form of the republic, parliament or any organs of state, is an offence. As he went into the courtroom today, he was hit on the head with a folder by an angry woman.

As we mentioned earlier, the case has caused widespread criticism, and has been held up by opponents of Turkey's accession into the EU as an example of how Turkish and European ideologies are incompatible.

Pamuk committed the crime of acknowledging Turkey's massacre of 1,000,000 Armenians in an incident during World War 1, and its killing of 30,000 Kurds (during the 1980s and 1990s). His comments were made in February this year in an interview with a Swiss magazine.

The Islamist leader of Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), has been careful to personally distance himself from the case. Turkey has a secular constitution, instituted by Kemal Attaturk, who abolished the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Previous governments who have tried to Islamify Turkey have been deposed by the fiercely secular military.

Erdogan has criticised those who oppose the trial and has said that such protests put pressure on the judiciary. On Pamuk's case, Erdogan said: "The result may very well be that he will be acquitted. It will be up to the judicial process to take its course."

Erdogan cannot stay neutral on the issue any longer. Almost as soon as proceedings started, the judge at Pamuk's trial, Metin Aydin, adjourned the case until February 7 2006. The court case could not proceed as the judge needed clarification from the government's Justice Ministry as to whether the case was being brought under the old Penal Code or a revised later edition of the code, states the BBC. Pamuk's comments were made before the new amendments were brought in, in summer.

The lawyers for Pamuk have argued for him to be tried under the old version of the penal code, which would require the justice minister to make a ruling.

The current justice minister is Cemil Cicek, who said in a newspaper on Thursday that he will need time before making rulings about the case. "It is not a simple matter of yes or no. The prosecution file will be studied in its entirety... once it comes," he said in the daily, Aksam.

Once again Erdogan is being forced to take responsibility for this case, with most of Europe viewing the case as a trial more about Turkey itself, rather than Pamuk or what he said. The court today was filled with supporters and denouncers of Pamuk. As he left the building there were angry scenes, and shouts of "Traitor!" and his car was pelted with eggs.

The novelist gave a statement to the press, which read: "It is not good for Turkey, for our democracy, for trials concerning freedom of thought - which should never happen in the first place - to be lengthy affairs."

Turkey in Istanbul may look fairly westernised, with many women wearing European styles and makeup, but in the rural heartland and to the east, the culture of Turkey is still infused with the spirit of the Ottomans. Voters from this heartland have placed Erdogan's Islamist party in power.

Pamuk has placed himself in direct conflict with the mentality of Islamism in a recent novel, published in 2002. Snow, set in the eastern city of Kars, features an Islamist worker who murders a school principal because he has obeyed the state instruction to refuse admission to girls who wear Muslim headscarves.

UPDATE: 17 December: Full accounts of the delayed trial can be found in the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times.

UPDATE 2: It would be remiss of me not to mention here the case of the Armenian proprietor and editor of Agos, a Turkish magazine, Hrant Dink, who was sentenced on 7 October 2005 to a six-months suspended sentence by the Sisli Court of Second Instance in Istanbul for breaking article 301 of the Turkish penal code, and "insulting Turkish identity". Dink's crime was to report in Agos of the effects the Armenian massacre from the time of World War 1 made upon members of the Armenian diaspora.

Dink is appealing that conviction, but he is not out of the woods, for another case is pending, which was initiated in 28 April 2005 at a court in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa. The trial which is still unfinished, concerns comments Dink had made at a conference in 2002. He faces a possible six years if convicted.

UPDATE 3: 24 Dec, 2005. On 22 December, Turkish Press reported that Abdullah Yildiz, editor of Literatur publishers, is also going to be charged under article 301, for publishing a book by Greek author Mara Meimaridi, entitled "The Witches of Smyrna".

This book has undergone 25 printings since it fiirst appeared on Turkish bookshelves in October 2004, and it is a novel featuring a Greek heroine, who lives in Smyrna (Izmir) at the end of the Ottoman Caliphate, who uses magic spells to achieve her goals. The book has sold 50,000 copies in Turkey. In passages of the book, it states that Turkish districts are dirty, and Turks have poor oral hygeine.

The author claims she never had any intentions of insulting Turkish "identity", and the date for the trial of Yildiz is not known.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 16, 2005 9:16 PM

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