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The director and owner of Belge Publishing House, Ragip Zarakolu has been subject to a lifetime of harassment from the Turkish authorities. After graduating college in 1968, Zarakolu began writing for magazines such as Ant and Yeni Ufuklar, both of which focused on issues of social justice in Turkey. In 1971, a military government assumed power in Turkey and instituted a crackdown on writers it deemed subversive. Following a conviction and a three-year stay in prison, Zarakolu steadfastly refused to abandon his campaign for freedom of thought, striving for an "attitude of respect for different thoughts and cultures to become widespread in Turkey." Since his writings were repeatedly banned in Turkey for their criticism of the country's military regime, Zarakolu began to turn his attention to abuses of human rights by governments in South America and elsewhere. In 1977, Zarakolu and his wife Ayse Nur founded the Belge Publishing House, which has been a focus for censorship since its inception. Its publications have not only drawn the government's ire. Zarakolu's office was firebombed by an extremist rightist group in 1995, forcing it to be housed in a cellar. Despite the death of his wife in 2002, Zarakolu has continued to publish writings critical of human rights violations around the world, especially in his native Turkey.
Case history:
Zarakolu's staunch belief in freedom of expression, his vocal campaign
against book bannings, and his persistence in publishing works that
violate Turkey's repressive censorship laws have resulted in a catalog of indictments dating back to the early 1970s.
Since his wife's death in 2002, Ragip Zarakolu has continued to face numerous prosecutions. He is currently on trial for an article published in the journal Ozgur Politka on March 8, 2003. The article was entitled "Sana Ne" ("Of No Interest") and its lambasting of what Zarakolu describes as Turkey's "aggressive and derogatory language used against the Kurdish region in Iraq" has seen the publisher once again fall foul of Article 312. Convictions under Article 312 carry sentences of between six months and two years.
PEN considers the charges brought against Ragip Zarakolu to be in direct conflict with his right to free expression as guaranteed by Articles 19 and 22 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is calling for the immediate and unconditional discontinuation of further legal processes against him.