SATIRE THAT COULD LAND BRITISH ARTIST IN A TURKISH JAIL
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent and Suna Erdem in Istanbul

The Times (London)
June 17, 2006, Saturday

A BRITISH artist is facing up to three years’ jail in Turkey for
exhibiting a collage that depicts its Prime Minister as a dog being
awarded a rosette by President Bush in a pet show.

Police in Istanbul seized Michael Dickinson’s Best in Show -in which
he superimposed the head of Recep Tayyip Erdogan on to a dog’s body
-from his exhibition in the city.

He has been told that he is likely to be charged with "insulting the
dignity of the Prime Minister". The show’s organiser, Erkan Kara,
will go on trial on September 12 on the same charge.

Mr Dickinson, 56, said: "It’s such an Alice in Wonderland feeling.
The law is so absurd…This law exists in Turkey about insulting
‘Turkishness’ or the State. You’re not allowed to state your opinion."

The case could greatly embarrass Turkey and Britain, for it raises
questions about Turkey’s human rights record as it seeks EU membership,
with Tony Blair’s backing.

After an international outcry, charges of "insulting Turkishness"
were dropped against the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who had upset
the authorities with remarks on the killings of Armenians in 1915-17.

Pamuk’s case was dropped in January after the justice ministry refused
to issue a ruling on whether the charges were valid.

Mr Dickinson, born in Durham, has lived in Turkey for 20 years,
teaching English at Yeditepe University. His younger brother, John, is
the father of 13-year old Caroline Dickinson, who was murdered while
on a school trip to France in 1996. He spent most of his childhood
in Kuwait, where his father worked for the Kuwait Oil Company. He
was educated at the Anglo-American School with his two brothers,
and later at boarding school in Yorkshire.

His exhibition was staged in Istanbul by the Global Peace and Justice
Coalition.

The collage, hung with anti-war images, refers to the Prime Minister
having taken legal action over cartoons depicting him as various
animals. Upset at Mr Kara’s plight, Mr Dickinson said: "I don’t want
anyone to go to prison for me."

Charles Thomson, of the Stuckist art movement, to which Mr Dickinson
belongs, has told Mr Blair that it is intolerable for an EU applicant
to censor political comment.

"I trust you will communicate your strongest condemnation and ask
for this case to be abandoned," he wrote, urging Mr Blair to oppose
Turkey’s EU membership until it changes its stance on human rights.

Mr Thomson has also written to Olli Rehn, the EU Enlargement
Commissioner, saying that in the Union the collage would be considered
acceptable free expression.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said: "Everybody will have to wait and
see whether the court decides if this is about freedom of expression
or not." A spokesman said that Turkey’s laws should be respected
and suggested that the international community was too hasty in
condemning it.

"We have laws here and just as it was the artist’s prerogative to
depict the Prime Minister as a dog, it is the prerogative of the
Prime Minister -and this could have been anyone -to decide that this
was insulting and sue him. We will see what the judges say about this."