SPELLING SEPARATISM WITH A "W": TURKEY STILL STRUGGLING WITH FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
By Gareth Jenkins
Eurasia Daily Monitor
Jan 24 2008
DC
On the evening of January 23, a court in Ankara decided to reverse
a previous ruling and allow the population of Turkey to visit YouTube.
For the previous four days all access to the popular video-sharing site
had been blocked by a previous court ruling on the grounds that one of
the videos insulted the memory of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938),
who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923.
In March 2007, a similar decision by the courts to block access to
YouTube on the grounds that one of the videos insulted Ataturk caused a
domestic outcry from advocates of freedom of expression in Turkey and
considerable international bewilderment. On that occasion, the video
was a rather childish collage put together by a Greek nationalist
youth claiming that Ataturk had been homosexual. Under almost any
circumstances the video would have been simply ignored.
However, the court ruling ensured that the "insult" to Ataturk’s
memory received tens of thousands of extra hits as Internet users
from everywhere except Turkey logged on to see what all the fuss was
about. As a result, the ruling became not only counterproductive but
exposed Turkey in general, and its judicial system in particular,
to widespread ridicule.
At first sight, it is difficult to find a logical explanation for
the decision last week by the court in Ankara to repeat the mistake.
However, in many ways, it is a symptom of a continuing broader failure
in Turkey to internalize the concept of freedom of expression. There
is no question that the situation is considerably better than 15 or
even 10 years ago. But the process is far from complete. Perhaps more
worryingly, progress has stalled and there have recently even been
signs of a regression.
Despite pressure from the EU, the ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) has yet to abolish Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code,
which makes it a criminal offence to denigrate "Turkishness." Justice
Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin recently announced that proposals to amend
the article would go before parliament before the end of January (NTV,
CNNTurk, January 24). However, the proposed changes are cosmetic and
will satisfy neither the EU nor advocates of freedom of expression
inside Turkey (see EDM, January 8).
Despite the public rhetoric about their commitment to freedom
of expression, the leaders of the AKP have hardly been leading
by example. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken more
journalists and cartoonists to court than any of his predecessors,
most famously insisting on prosecuting a cartoonist for comparing his
uncertainty about how to go about lifting the headscarf ban (see EDM,
January 16) with a kitten becoming entangled in a ball of yarn. Most
recently Erdogan’s erstwhile AKP colleague President Abdullah Gul has
taken two cartoonists to court for questioning gifts Gul received
from the Saudi royal family and a business venture set up by Gul’s
16 year-old son (Radikal, January 24).
Although it has only been the high profile cases – such as the
prosecution of Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk – that have attracted
international attention, a report by the Independent Communications
Network (BIA) notes that 55 people were prosecuted under Article
301 in 2007. Another 199 journalists and writers were taken to court
under other provisions of the Turkish Penal Code. Most alarmingly,
2007 also witnessed an increase in attacks on members of the media.
BIA reported that 34 journalists and 12 media organs were attacked in
Turkey in 2007, mostly by Turkish ultranationalists. Most notoriously,
on January 19, 2007, the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was
murdered by an ultranationalist youth with connections to members of
the Turkish security forces ().
The tightest restrictions on freedom of expression continue to be
applied to Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Although Kurds are theoretically
now allowed to speak and publish in their own languages, in practice
many restrictions remain and the Turkish authorities continue to regard
even the most innocuous of statements as evidence of an attempt to call
for the creation of an independent state; even peacefully advocating
one remains a criminal offense in Turkey. Yet finding a legal pretext
to suppress publications often results in the authorities descending
beyond the merely repressive into the absurd.
The Public Prosecutor in the city of Gaziantep in the predominantly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey recently ordered the confiscation of
the January 17 edition of a local newspaper called Coban Atesi. The
newspaper’s offence was to publish a short biography and a few poems
by a Kurdish writer and to write his name, in the modified Latin
alphabet used by Kurds, as Abdula Pesew. Twenty-one people associated
with the newspaper were then charged under Article 222 of the Turkish
Penal Code, which makes its an offense to violate Law No. 671 of
1925 in which Ataturk ordered that henceforth the Turkish language
would be written in a modified Latin alphabet rather than the Arabic
script that had been used previously. However, unlike the one used for
Kurdish, Ataturk’s modified Latin alphabet did not include the letter
"w." If found guilty, the defendants face the prospect of a jail term
(Bianet, January 22).
Prosecutions of Kurds for using the letter "w" are nothing new. There
are already several ongoing cases against other Kurdish writers that
were initiated in 2007. However, the Turkish authorities have been
curiously selective in their application of Article 222. After all,
every official website in Turkey, including the one of the Justice
Ministry that oversees all courts, has the letter "w" in its web
address.