CBC Nova Scotia, Canada
British artist charged in Turkey for insulting the PM
Last Updated Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:13:49 EDT
CBC Arts
A British artist living in Turkey is facing up to three years in
prison after being charged with insulting the Turkish prime minister’s
dignity with a work of art he created.
Michael Dickinson, who has lived in Turkey for 20 years, was arrested
outside a courthouse in Istanbul on Tuesday where he was protesting at
another freedom of speech trial.
He refused to put away a poster with a collage showing Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a dog attached to a Stars and Stripes leash.
"I wasn’t even planning to open it up," said Dickinson in a telephone
interview with the Guardian newspaper.
"But then I said ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ – if I’m here at all,
it’s about freedom of speech."
Dickinson, an English-language teacher as well as a writer and artist,
was at the courts in support of anti-war activist Erkan Kara. Kara was
in court because he displayed one of Dickinson’s works depicting the
U.S. president pinning an award rosette on Erdogan at a dog show.
Another author to be tried on insult charge
Freedom of speech has become an explosive issue in Turkey recently.
In a highly-publicized trial, the government took one of the country’s
best-known authors, Orhan Pamuk, to court for "insulting" the Turkish
identity.
The charges stemmed from an interview Pamuk gave in 2005 to a Swiss
newspaper in which he criticized the Turkish government for refusing
to recognize the Armenian genocide.
After intense pressure from the European Union and other countries,
the government dropped charges against the best-selling author of Snow
and My Name is Red.
Erdogan has been criticized for abusing a clause in Turkish law to
attack anyone who criticizes him. In March 2005, he sued a cartoonist
for portraying him as a cat tangled in a ball of wool.
Article 301 makes it an offence to insult the "Turkish identity" or
state institutions, including the armed forces.
Reports say the prime minister has earned as much as 115,000 ($163,000
Cdn) in damages from insult cases.
Next week, another Turkish novelist goes on trial in a freedom of
speech case. Elif Shafak is accused of "insulting Turkishness" in her
new novel The Bastard of Istanbul.
The Armenian characters in Shafak’s book make disparaging comments
about Turks and refer to a genocide of Armenians during the last years
of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey denies allegations that 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide from 1915 to 1917.