Turkish laws put to the test

Lawyer leads effort to prosecute citizens critical of the state

The Wall Street Journal
March 14, 2006
Page A6

By PHILIP SHISHKIN

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Kemal Kerincsiz dreams of a day when Turkey will reclaim
its Ottoman-era greatness, become a regional superpower and turn away from
both the European Union and the U.S. But for now, the nationalist lawyer
would be happy to see Hrant Dink thrown in jail.

Last year, Mr. Dink, the editor of the Istanbul-based Armenian weekly Agos,
was found guilty of denigrating the Turkish state in one of a string of
cases instigated by Mr. Kerinsciz. The self-proclaimed defender of the
Turkish state has dusted off old articles in the Turkish penal code to force
prosecutors to put Mr. Dink and others on trial. Mr. Kerinsciz has
instigated cases against Orhan Pamuk, an acclaimed Turkish novelist, and
against the organizers of an academic conference. He has even tried, without
success, to get a Dutch member of the European Parliament punished for
criticizing Turkey’s armed forces.

The maverick lawyer’s quest to restrict free speech has undermined Turkey’s
effort to burnish its democratic credentials, exposing the residue of the
country’s authoritarian past at a time when Ankara is trying to change its
ways to join the EU. Mr. Kerincsiz is part of a nationalist movement that is
trying to pull the country in the opposite direction and away from Western
alliances — with the U.S. as well as Europe.

Mr. Kerincsiz’s limited success, despite tireless efforts, suggests Turkey’s
civil-society movement has advanced. But critics say the country needs to do
more to rid itself of archaic prosecutorial tools. “In our penal code, it’s
considered a crime to criticize the state, the army, the parliament,” says
Mr. Dink, the Armenian newspaper editor. “But in a modern democracy, you
should be able to criticize these institutions.”

Moving Westward

While Turkey faces at least a decade of tough negotiations before it can
join the EU, the country already has changed many of its laws and traditions
to conform with Europe’s democratic requirements. Ankara has given greater
civil rights to its ethnic minorities, abolished the death penalty, limited
the role of the military in state affairs and shelved a law that would have
criminalized adultery.

Turkey is well along the path of political and economic integration with the
West. Indeed, Turks in general favor closer ties to Europe: While opposition
to the EU has increased, some 63.5% support EU membership, while 30% oppose
it, according to a poll last year by the Pollmark agency. The nationalists
aren’t giving up without a fight, though, and they have succeeded in putting
the government on the defensive.

“We don’t need the European Union — it will divide us and hinder us from
becoming a regional power,” Mr. Kerincsiz says. Recalling how the Western
powers divided the Ottoman Empire after World War I, in which the Turks
fought and lost on the German side, he adds, “The West hasn’t changed its
policy toward Turkey since then.”

Eye on Elections

With Turkey’s next general election scheduled for 2007, the nationalists are
appealing to anti-Western sentiment that is always present in parts of
Turkey’s mostly Muslim society. “The Valley of the Wolves, Iraq,” a hit
fictional movie released earlier this year, shows U.S. soldiers killing
women and children at an Iraqi wedding, while a recent novel imagines a war
between Turkey and the EU.

Seven years ago, Mr. Kerincsiz founded an association of nationalist
lawyers, whose membership has since grown to 800 members in Istanbul alone.
The association’s long-term goal: a Turkey-led confederation stretching from
the former Ottoman provinces in the Balkans to the Turkic republics of
Central Asia. “You have to have big goals in life,” says Mr. Kerincsiz, a
lanky and energetic 46-year-old who was an honors student in law school.

But it is his immediate strategy — prosecuting words and deeds he considers
damaging to the Turkish republic — that has pulled the association from the
nationalist fringe into the center of a debate on what the modern Turkish
state should look like. His first high-profile strike came last year when
two Istanbul universities teamed up to organize a conference on Armenians in
Turkey, one of the most controversial issues in the country’s history.
Armenia says the Ottoman government orchestrated a genocide of the Armenian
population during World War I. Turkey denies that what took place was a
genocide, arguing that thousands of Turks died too in a brutal conflict.

Taking on Universities

Mr. Kerincsiz, who says he doesn’t recognize Armenia as an independent
nation, complained to an Istanbul court, fearing the conference was a
foreign plot to force Turkey to admit to a genocide, open the door to
compensation claims and weaken the Turkish state. He urged the court to
investigate the academic credentials of the participants and their sources
of funding. The judges instructed the two universities to suspend the
conference. The organizers eventually managed to hold the gathering by
moving it to a school that wasn’t covered by the ruling.

The flap over the conference spawned a lively debate in the Turkish media.
Murat Belge, a professor of comparative literature, wrote a column in the
Radikal newspaper accusing the court of trampling the law by banning the
academic gathering. To drive his point home, he recounted a disparaging joke
about judges.

Mr. Kerincsiz then got prosecutors to haul Mr. Belge, along with four other
columnists, to court, claiming they had insulted the court. That, he said,
would be a crime under Turkish laws banning the denigration of the state and
its institutions. The laws date to the early days of the Turkish republic,
when the government sought to strengthen the young state against separatist
influences. The laws have never been removed from the books, though they are
rarely enforced by the government.

The court hearing last month quickly descended into chaos. Mr. Kerincsiz and
his nationalist lawyers yelled at the judge and lashed out at the presence
of foreign observers at the trial, participants said. The judge had to
remove one unruly lawyer from the courtroom. “The irony is that our case
starts with the premise that some people had insulted the court,” Mr. Belge
says.

Image Problem

Mr. Kerincsiz’s most famous attack — against Mr. Pamuk, for mentioning
during an interview the killings of Armenians and Kurds in Turkey — failed
when the court dropped the case against the novelist.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, has acknowledged anti-free-speech
laws are tarnishing the country’s image. Yet the government has shied away
from changing any of them. And that has only encouraged Mr. Kerincsiz, who
says he aims more for political impact than legal victories. His association
has even joined a quixotic campaign to kick the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate
out of Turkey, accusing it of attempts to set up a Vatican-style state
within a state.

For Mr. Dink, the Armenian newspaper editor, the consequences of Mr.
Kerincsiz’s nationalist quest aren’t hypothetical. In 2004, Mr. Dink wrote
an article urging Armenians “not to fight with the ‘Turk’ anymore” because
the animosity creates poisoned blood. The nationalists read the article to
mean that the Turkish blood itself is poisoned and took Mr. Dink to court.

He received a six-month suspended sentence, which he appealed. When he
criticized the judgment in print, the nationalists sued him again for
insulting the court. “I’m going to leave the country if the higher court
doesn’t overturn the judgment,” says Mr. Dink, who was born and raised in
Turkey. Of Mr. Kerincsiz, he says: “He’s always there trying to chase me.”

Write to Philip Shishkin at philip.shishkin@wsj.com
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