WILL FRANKFURT OPEN TURKEY’S CENSORED BOOKS?

guardian.co.uk
Thursday October 16 2008

Some see the book fair’s spotlight as a sign that censorship’s power
is waning.

Dark and light … Turkish president Abdullah Gul addresses the
Frankfurt Book Fair. Photograph: Arne Dedert/AP

"Turkey in all its colours" is a prominent slogan at this week’s
Frankfurt Book Fair, where the country is guest of honour. But
this was never going to be entirely true after July, when a group
of high-profile authors announced a boycott of the fair over their
unwillingness to be represented at the fair by Turkey’s AKP government
and its cultural minister. And though there are bright displays from
100 of its many publishers around the halls, you don’t have to look
too closely to see the shades of censorship over writers whose freedom
of expression has long been heavily restricted.

Despite this there are more than 300 Turkish writers in Frankfurt
this week, including some who have been prosecuted under 2005’s
notorious Article 301 law which criminalised "insulting Turkishness"
– most prominently Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, fellow novelist Elif
Shafak and poet and commentator Perihan Magden.

Magden, a self-described "traitor" to Turkey, wasn’t actually invited
by the organising committee to attend the fair. But she’s here because
her publisher invited her, and because she believes it’s a chance=2
0for the world to hear about Turkish literature for reasons other
than the prosecution of its writers.

"It’s a good thing in general for us, because only Orhan Pamuk is
known abroad," she says, taking a short break from an hectic interview
schedule which, she notes, has not been affected by her "unofficial"
status here.

"Being the guest of honour will help us a lot, especially with our
relationship with Europe. Anglo Saxon countries have a different way of
looking at Turks, but the way France and Germany look [at us] is very
negative – they really don’t want us to be part of the European Union.

She’s also hoping that it may promote a better understanding of the
many Turks living as "strangers in the night" in Europe. "This gives a
chance for Germans to see that Turks are not one-dimensional peasants
who are frozen in time … They can see through our literature – we
have such a vast variety in our literature – so this helps developing
our relationship with Europe, definitely."

There’s certainly potential for a much wider presence for Turkish
writing in translation. English readers get few opportunities to
read a literature that here in Frankfurt is being shown to run the
gamut from crime fiction via feminist critique to comic writing and
discussions of epic poetry.

"Frankfurt tends to pick those who’ve not been in the spotlight [as
guest of honour] and Turkey for sure has not been in the spotlight for
its culture and literature, but for political reasons," says publisher
Muge Gursoy Sökmen, one of the fair’s organisers who has also
chaired a PEN committee on Turkish writers in prison. "We want Turkey
to be remembered for its culture. Of course it has other problems –
censorship, that’s our struggle, but people do not censor themselves,"
she says, adding that there are 1,700 independent publishers in Turkey.

According to PEN, more than 1,000 people, including writers, publishers
and journalists, have been brought to the courts for "insulting the
Turkish republic" since 2005. Magden is just one of them: she was
tried and later acquitted for a magazine column criticising military
conscription in Turkey.

Publisher Ragip Zarakolu was not so lucky; after he published a book
acknowledging the Armenian genocide, The Truth Will Set Us Free,
he was convicted in June of having transgressed Article 301.

Zarakolu is at the fair nonetheless, and hopes it will provide a
"platform [to discuss] our problem of freedom of expression". He’s on a
panel on Friday tackling this very issue, and the fair’s programme says
the topic will be "approached free from conservative and reactionary
approaches".

"We’re not brushing it under the carpet, on the contrary," insists
Sökmen.

"We’re not trying to have a diplomatic presence, this is a publishing
fair…We are publishers who think about these issues all 0Athe time."

Zarakolu is unbowed by his conviction, which was reduced from five
months in prison to a fine, and says he’d publish again if he needed
to. "I’m always against auto censorship, and I’m also one of the
promoters of freedom of expression in Turkey," he says.

Turkey’s AKP government has created "huge problems", he says, by
obstructing free speech in recent years despite its much-trumpeted
"transition to democracy". He says that he was singled out by a
nationalist judiciary riled by his addressing discrimination against
Turkey’s Kurdish population.

Zarakolu will be speaking his mind during his panel debate, as has
the equally undaunted Magden, exhausted but revelling in the press
attention.

"Because my book is published in Germany they interview me, and because
I’m a columnist they ask me political stuff. I always tell them that
Turkey’s main issue is not the fundamentalists or the Kurdish threat
but the omnipotent position of the army." She says she is very glad
of this opportunity to talk about her country, but is not optimistic
the fair will help open up public debate at home.

"I am not making even one speech for the culture ministry, and my book
sells more than other books, but it doesn’t matter, I’m a blacklisted
name". Her agent Barbaros Altug is no less critical of the fair. "If
you’re saying ‘Turkey in all its colours’ then you have to include
all, but they didn’t," he says. "A w hole generation of writers is
missing, between 55 and 75 years old. Latife Tekin is one of the most
translated writers, considered a perennial Nobel contender. Leyla
Erbil is not here. Some have some conflicts with the cultural policy
of the government, some have boycotted the fair, some were not invited
at all – and this is an important group."

Despite all this, English PEN is hopeful that Turkey’s presence
as guest of honour could prove a real turning point for freedom of
expression in the country.

"At PEN we feel that if authors like Pamuk and Shafak and Magden,
who’ve all been the victims of Turkey’s anti-free speech culture
are prepared to be here, that suggests to us that perhaps this is a
really important moment and a positive moment," says director Jonathan
Heawood, pointing to Pamuk’s willingness to appear next to Turkish
president Abdullah Gul at Tuesday’s opening ceremony.

Pamuk himself used that opportunity to hit out at the "oppression"
of Turkey’s writers, but also hailed "Istanbul’s vibrant book trade
[which] at last represents its rich and layered history".

Heawood adds: "The world’s press knows what has been going on in Turkey
for the last few years, and hopefully we can get some momentum out of
this in particular with reference to laws in Turkey, especially 301."

He is less hopeful about next year’s guest of honour, China, where
according to PEN there are currently 42 writers and=2 0journalists
held in Chinese prisons.

"In a sense we have seen that Turkey does have the capacity to
change. In response to the pressure from outside and inside they
have changed 301 slightly – not quite enough. Whereas China – we all
thought the Olympics would give the opportunity for the government to
gracefully allow more freedom of speech, but the opposite happened. I
don’t have enormous hope that for China, western engagement is
an answer. [Plus] for publishers China represents such an enormous
market that there will be very little will on the part of the western
publishing industry to use Frankfurt as a human rights standpoint."

It is to be hoped that 2010’s guest of honour Argentina proves less
problematic.

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