Thought Crime

22 September 2006



Turkish Novelist Acquitted of “Insulting Turkishness”

Free speech and a free press mean that it is acceptable to insult people. Some individuals, frankly, merit little else. On the other hand, iInsulting entire groups is stupid bigotry and nothing more but must be tolerated in order to protect the verbal exchange of ideas, even bad ones. So that fact that a Turkish novelist has been acquitted of charges she “insulted Turkishness” is good news. The bad news is that it is a crime in Turkey at all.

Elif Shafak, who wrote The Bastard of Istanbul, was charged under Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code for comments made by characters in the book over the genocide of Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. That annoyed some big shots who apparently still think the murders either never happened or weren’t really all that many (1.5 million is usually the figure given, accomplished without death camps). Ms. Shafak faced three years in jail for “denigrating Turkish national identity.”

To put this into context, a similar law would make it a crime for a German author to criticize the Holocaust – quite the opposite of what German law and national feeling are. Or in another case, American writers couldn’t say bad things about “The Trail of Tears,” the Sand Creek Massacre or slavery. Telling the truth about past crimes can’t denigrate, and laws against telling the truth are crimes themselves.

However, it is a sign of progress in Turkey that the case against Ms. Shafak collapsed after 40 minutes in court. Despite one of the prosecutors claiming the book was Armenian propaganda, the judges threw out the case for lack of evidence. Regrettably, the law was not thrown out as contrary to Turkish freedom, which would have marked even greater progress. Indeed, one could argue that Article 301 itself denigrates Turkish national identity.

Ms. Shafak gets the last word. “If Article 301 will be interpreted in this way nobody can write novels in Turkey anymore, no-one can make movies any more,” she told the BBC before the trial. “The words of a character could be used as evidence against the author or the film director. I think it is extremely important to defend the autonomy of art, and of literature.”

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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