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Repression In The Age Of Liberty

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  • Repression In The Age Of Liberty

    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.
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