TURKISH AUTHOR ON TRIAL FOR INSULTING ISLAM
Thomas Grove
Malaysia Star
09/5/27/worldupdates/2009-05-26T230556Z_01_NOOTR_R TRMDNC_0_-398965-1&sec=Worldupdates
May 26 2009
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish-French author Nedim Gursel went on trial
on Tuesday charged by the state with insulting Islam in his book
"The Daughters of Allah".
Court cases against writers and academics have hampered Turkey’s bid
to join the European Union, which has urged it to guarantee freedom
of speech.
Gursel’s lawyer, Sehnaz Yuzer, said the charges against her client —
insulting religion and endangering security through inciting hatred
— were based on characterisations of the Prophet Mohammad and his
family in the book.
But Gursel, who faces between one and three years in jail if found
guilty, said the passages cited by authorities were not present in
the novel.
"The book has been out for a year," he told Reuters by telephone. "It’s
reached 30,000 people — where is the hatred it has incited? Where
is the anger?"
Unusually, Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, responsible for
the activities of mosques and the teaching of theology, intervened
in the trial with testimony against the defendant.
"We are hoping for an acquittal, but what is really worrisome in
this case is the Religious Affairs Directorate’s report against me,"
Gursel said.
"The directorate has no place to say how a book should be written."
In Tuesday’s hearing, the court combined two separate cases against
Gursel, one opened in March and the other in August.
Rights groups have criticised limits on freedom of speech in Turkey,
which is predominantly Muslim but officially secular.
"The trial against Nedim Gursel is one more example of the continuing
suppression of freedom of expression in Turkey," the activist group
PEN said previously in a statement.
It said his trial brought Turkey into direct conflict with its
obligations to protect freedom of expression under the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention
on Human Rights.
Few of the cases brought against writers or journalists have resulted
in prison sentences.
Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk went on trial for "insulting
Turkishness" when he told a Swiss magazine that Turkey was responsible
for the deaths of 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians, but his case
was dropped.
Gursel, who has French citizenship and lives in Paris, travelled to
Istanbul for Tuesday’s trial. His next hearing is on June 25.