The Globe and Mail, Canada
Oct 8 2005
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION ONE MAN’S BATTLE
A writer fights the war of words
Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk was charged with ‘denigrating’ his beloved
countryBy CONSTANCE ROOKE
Saturday, October 8, 2005 Page R12
Last February, Turkey’s most celebrated writer, Orhan Pamuk, told a
Swiss newspaper that “thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians
were killed in these lands and almost no one dares talk about it.
Therefore, I do.” This caused a furor within Turkey, with liberals
defending Pamuk’s right to free speech and/or the critical importance
of speaking out about this particular matter, and reactionaries
branding Pamuk a traitor, burning his books, and issuing the
anonymous death threats that have forced the writer to flee his
country.
In general, the liberal camp passionately supports Turkey’s bid for
admission to the European Union, while reactionary nationalist forces
fiercely oppose it — and the terrible story of what has happened to
Pamuk is strongly linked to this struggle within Turkey.
In July, the prosecutor’s office in Istanbul determined that Pamuk’s
words were indeed protected by free speech. However, in late August,
a district prosecutor laid charges against Pamuk — a world-famous
writer whose deep love of Turkey is palpable in all he writes — and
the furor became international. External opponents and supporters of
Turkey’s admission to the EU were appalled, and the European
Parliament launched an initiative to monitor the legal process
against Pamuk. His trial on charges of “denigrating Turkey” is
scheduled to begin on Dec. 16. Turkey’s penal code cites a penalty of
up to three years in jail for this offence, and one-third more if, as
in Pamuk’s case, the supposed insult was voiced outside Turkey.
The charge against Pamuk is in direct opposition to the United
Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the
European Convention on Human Rights. Turkey is a signatory to both.
Liberals in Turkey are rightly concerned that worldwide attention to
this outrageous charge, and suppression of debate on the darkest
chapters of their country’s history, may lead to rejection by the EU.
A powerful minority of Turks on the far right, however, have welcomed
— indeed, probably engineered — the charges against Pamuk largely
for that reason. The timing is certainly suspicious: Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan began his talks with the EU on Oct. 3, just over a
month after charges were brought against Pamuk.
Writers around the world have been quick to defend Pamuk and to
express their outrage. Michael Ondaatje, for example, has issued this
statement through PEN Canada: “Orhan Pamuk is one of the great
writers of our time and is also one of the most generous chroniclers
of the glories of Turkey and its culture. From The White Castle to
Snow to his recent memoir Istanbul, it is clear that this is a writer
who loves his country. That he should be accused of ‘denigrating’
Turkey and threatened with a prison term is shocking. It is an
appalling example of censorship in a country seeking admission to the
EU and clearly signals a lack of freedom of expression in Turkey.”
Within Turkey, the battle for and against free speech continues. Last
spring a group of Turkish academics tried to hold an international
conference in Istanbul on the Armenian massacres of 1915. They hoped
by ‘owning’ this issue to signal to the European community that
Turkey is a maturing democracy, intent on protecting freedom of
expression. But Turkey’s Justice Minister called the conference “a
dagger in the back of the Turkish people,” and the conference was
postponed. Then the Prime Minister voiced his support for the
conference, which was rescheduled for September so as to precede his
talks with the EU. To the Prime Minister’s great embarrassment, a
last-minute court order again prevented the conference from starting.
Organizers circumvented this by moving it to another venue, and the
conference opened the next day with stormy demonstrations for, and
against it.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister has “announce[d] to the world that there is
free speech in Turkey,” and pointed out that no verdict has been
reached on the charges against Pamuk. But the charges were brought,
and they have not been dropped. Moreover, as International PEN
reports, despite a recent decline in convictions and prison sentences
under laws penalizing free speech, there are currently over fifty
writers and publishers before the Turkish courts. In several senses,
Orhan Pamuk is not alone.
Writer and academic Constance Rooke is the president of PEN Canada.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress