REPRESSION IN THE AGE OF LIBERTY
By Ralph R. Reiland
American Spectator
Sept 12 2006
Imagine if insulting George W. Bush were a crime or if we jailed
writers for being critical of U.S. policies. Half the authors on the
New York Times’ best-seller list would be behind bars.
It’s different in Turkey. For the crime of "insulting Turkishness,"
best-selling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak is facing up to four years
in prison. Her trial is scheduled to begin on September 21.
At issue are several remarks made by a fictional character in Shafak’s
latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, already a top-selling book
in Turkey and set to be published next year by Viking in the United
States.
The charges against Shafak involve the word "genocide," spoken in
her novel by a fictional character of Armenian ancestry regarding
the death of Armenians during World War I.
"I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their
relatives in the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915," says the imaginary
character, "but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide
because I was raised by some Turk named Mustapha."
In the United States, some fictional Apache in a novel could say much
the same thing about the fate of his tribe at the hands of European
settlers and no one would be headed for the courthouse.
A historian at the University of Hawaii, David E. Stannard,
unincarcerated, described the forced removal and killing of native
Americans as "the worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed,
roaring across two continents nonstop for four centuries and consuming
the lives of countless tens of millions of people."
No American churchmen went to jail when the National Council of
Churches adopted a resolution that branded the journey of Christopher
Columbus an "invasion" that resulted in the "genocide of native
people."
In Turkey, however, public comment, even by a fictional character,
about the killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the
Ottoman Turks during and after World War I is a taboo subject and
potentially illegal.
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, adopted in June 2005, states
that:
* "Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of
between six months and three years."
* "Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey,
the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security
matters shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months
and two years."
A third section of the Penal Code, applicable to Shafak, a Turkish
citizen and currently an assistant professor in Near Eastern Studies
at the University of Arizona, states, "In cases where denigration
of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country,
the punishment shall be increased by one third."
Under Article 301, internationally acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk,
Turkey’s most famous novelist, was charged last year with "insulting
Turkishness" after he stated in an interview with a Swiss newspaper
that "30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were murdered in these
lands and no one but me dares talk about it."
The Turkish Publishers’ Association reports that more than 60 writers
and journalists have been charged under Article 301 with various forms
of "insulting Turkishness," including the intellectual transgression
of allegedly insulting Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), the founder of
modern Turkey.
Five journalists were charged last year for articles they wrote
challenging the decision of an Istanbul court to ban an academic
conference dealing with the killing of Armenians under the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1917. The writers’ crime? Attempting to "influence
judicial procedures" by objecting to the court’s interference with
academic freedom.
The complaints against Pamuk and Shafak were filed by attorney
Kemal Kerincsiz, head of the Turkish Jurists’ Union. "We will not
allow insults and abuse of Turkishness in the name of freedom of
expressions," explained Kerincsiz.
Less narrow-minded, Shafak portrays her upcoming court battle as
part of an ongoing struggle for modernity and freedom of expression:
"What’s going on right now is a backlash. There’s a clash of opinion.
On the one hand are the people who are much more cosmopolitan-minded,
much more multicultural, who want to keep Turkey as an open society
and who very much support wholeheartedly the European Union process.
But on the other hand are the people who want to maintain Turkey as an
enclosed society, more xenophobic, more nationalistic, more insular."
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert
Morris University in Pittsburgh.