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December 24, 2005
Turkey: Islamist Regime Announces Another Trial For "Insulting Turkey"
We described earlier the case of novelist Orhan Pamuk, who is currently waiting to return to court for his trial on February 7, 2006 on charges of "insulting Turkey's identity", breaching article 301 of the Turkish penal code.
Pamuk's crime was to mention a massacre of 1 million Armenians by Ottoman forces during an interview with a Swiss magazine in February. This event is claimed not have happened, and the trial seems to be partly encouraged by Erdogan's ruling Islamist Party, the AKP. Now, another individual is facing trial under the same law.
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.
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 (pictured), 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 on 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.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 24, 2005 11:49 AM
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