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| Turkey Background Briefing: July 2006 |
Novelist Elif Shafak to be tried for "Insulting Turkishness”
Indictments of Major Novelists Signal Erosion of Free Expression Gains in Turkey
For more information contact: Larry Siems, (212) 334-1660 ext. 105, lsiems@pen.org
Elif Shafak, a highly respected and best-selling author, will face trial on September 21, 2006 before the Istanbul Beyoglu 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance. She is charged with "insulting Turkishness” and will be the third prominent novelist to be hauled into court in Turkey in just over a year. Her publisher, Semi Sökmen, and Asli Bican, her translator, are not currently subject to prosecution, but under Article 11 of the Turkish Press Law would be required to be in court when the author is not in the country.
Shafak will stand trial under Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code for her novel The Bastard of Istanbul. The novel follows the histories of two families, one in Istanbul and the other an exiled Armenian family living in San Francisco; the charges stem from a passage in the novel in which one of the characters refers to the deaths of Armenians during the First World War as genocide. Shafak, who divides her time between Istanbul and a teaching position in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote the book in English, and the English edition will be published by Viking Penguin in March 2007. The Turkish version was published by Metis Publishing House in March 2006 and has become a bestseller in Turkey.
Just last month it appeared that Shafak might not be tried. On June 7, 2006, the Beyoglu Public Prosecutor dismissed a proceeding that had been opened against her after she and Sökmen argued that The Bastard of Istanbul is a work of literature and that an author cannot be prosecuted for comments by fictional characters. But a member of the “Unity of Jurists,” a group of right wing lawyers that has been active in launching prosecutions of numerous writers and journalists in recent months, filed a complaint, and in early July, the 7th High Criminal Court overruled the public prosecutor and ordered the trial to proceed.
Article 301 Trials
The prosecution of Shafak mirrors the prosecution last year of Orhan Pamuk, one of the world's most well-known and acclaimed literary figures. Pamuk was charged with “insulting Turkishness” for stating in an interview in Germany that “thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” He was referring to the effect of stringent laws in Turkey limiting discussion of both the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces and Kurdish deaths as a result of the 22-year conflict between Turkish forces and Kurdish separatists.
Article 301/1 of the Turkish Penal Code, the “insulting Turkishness” law under which both Shafak and Pamuk have been charged, took effect in June 2005. The law states “A person who explicitly insults being a Turk, the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be imposed to a penalty of imprisonment for a term of six months to three years.” Pamuk faced additional prison time under Article 301/3, which says “Where insulting being a Turk is committed by a Turkish citizen in a foreign country, the penalty to be imposed shall be increased by one third.”
At least 15 journalists, editors, and publishers are standing or have recently stood trial under the insulting or denigrating Turkishness provision. Notable cases include that of Fatih Tas, a publisher defending himself in several Article 301 cases including one stemming from his publication of a book by Noam Chomsky; five journalists who were charged for their criticism of official attempts to ban a conference focusing on the Armenian massacres in November 2005; and Abdullah Yilmaz, the editor in chief of a publishing house, who was charged for issuing a Turkish edition of Greek writer Mara Meimaridi's best-selling novel The Witches of Smyrna.
The trials are a continuing embarrassment to Turkey as it pursues an application for membership in the European Union--and indeed, that may be the point of the prosecutions. The nationalist and right wing groups including “Unity of Jurists” that have been filing complaints and pressing for convictions oppose EU membership, and appear to be using the proceedings as a means both of jeopardizing Turkey"s application and rallying their supporters inside Turkey.
In January, prosecutors announced they would not proceed with the case against Orhan Pamuk, and until recently there had been no convictions under Article 301. But the writers and publishers charged under the article have all been subjected to lengthy legal processes with hearings taking place over months and even years; if and when cases were finally dismissed, it was only after considerable cost and the kind of harassment that serves to make others think twice before writing and publishing work on subjects considered taboo.But in a worrying development that may bode ill for Shafak and others currently on trial for “insulting Turkishness,” last week the Turkish Court of Cassation upheld a guilty verdict and six month suspended sentence against Hrant Dink, editor of the Armenian language newspaper Agos. Dink received the sentence in May 2006 for articles published in 2004 entitled “The Armenian Identity.”
Equally troubling is the increasingly hostile atmosphere of the court hearings themselves. Orhan Pamuk and a number of international observers were harassed and jostled by a crowd outside his hearing in December, and the courtroom was jammed with supporters of the prosecution. When Hrant Dink appeared at his hearing in May, members of the prosecution harangued the defendants, their lawyers, and even the judge. Pro-prosecution crowds threatened and spat on the defendants and journalists as they entered the courthouse and threw coins and other objects at them from the public gallery during the proceedings. At one point, those inside were unable to leave for around an hour until police were able to escort them out. One of those trapped in the courtroom described the scene as an “attempted lynching.”
Backsliding in Turkey
In all, PEN knows of more than 70 writers, publishers, and journalists who are currently under indictment or standing trial in Turkey. Among them is Perihan Magden, another internationally recognized novelist who Orhan Pamuk described in a recent column as “one of the most inventive and outspoken writers of our time.”
Magden appeared in an Istanbul courtroom on June 7, 2006 under Article 318 of the Penal Code on charges that she has “turned people against military service” for an article entitled “Conscientious Objection is a Human Right.” In the article, she defends conscientious objector Mehmet Tarhan, who refused to complete his military service because he believed that as a homosexual he would suffer discrimination in the military. In her article, Magden referred to United Nations and Council of Europe views that conscientious objection is a basic right and challenged Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge this right. Her trial was postponed until July 27 to enable the court to gather more evidence. Three other writers are on trial for writing on conscientious objection.
The situation for writers in Turkey appears to have deteriorated even further in recent days with the approval of new amendments to the Anti-Terror Law. The new legislation broadens the definition of terrorism, increasing the likelihood that writers and journalists will be prosecuted and that those who are tried will be convicted and sentenced to prison. Free expression advocates inside Turkey and abroad have protested the changes, among them Martin Scheinin, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism. Scheinin has written that the law contains a “very broad definition of terrorism and a very long and wide list of terrorist offenses. Consequently, the limitations that result in respect of freedom of expression would not be confined to countering terrorism but could be used also in respect of non-violent expession of opinion.”
In the 1990s, hundreds of writers and journalists were sent to prison in Turkey, often for many years, in connection with their writings. Many were charged under vague anti-terror laws that all but outlawed writings that touched on subjects such as Turkey’s Kurdish minority. After a decade of civil disobedience by Turkey’s literary and journalism communities and international protests including pressure from the Europe, which made human rights improvements a condition of opening talks on Turkey’s EU application—key provisions of the penal code were discarded or amended in ways that nominally protected freedom of expression.
But in many cases new provisions such as Article 301 have come to serve the same purpose as the laws that were eliminated, and after an initial dip in prosecutions, judicial harassment has increased dramatically in the past year. As things begin to look more and more like the 1990s, the prosecutions of Elif Shafak, Orhan Pamuk, and Perihan Magden are sending the message that even Turkey’s most celebrated writers had better watch what they say.
Press:
 NPR: Author Faces Trial for 'Insulting Turkishness'
New York Sun: Novelist May Be Jailed for a Character's Remarks
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