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From: newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl (newsdesk at aps.nl)
Subject: TRKNWS-L  News


            PROMINENT TURKISH NOVELIST MAY BECOME A CASUALTY OF WAR




   Nicole Watts, Chronicle Foreign Service

   Ankara If an Istanbul public prosecutor has his way, one of Turkey's
   greatest living authors will be locked behind bars this spring, the
   most prominent victim of sweeping anti-terror laws that give the
   government nearly free rein to restrict discussion of this country's
   ``Kurdish problem.''

   Yashar Kemal, an internationally acclaimed novelist whose tales of a
   vanishing way of life on the punishing Anatolian plains are standard
   fare in Turkish literature textbooks, is scheduled to appear before a
   state security court May 5 to answer charges of advocating separatism.


   The accusations stem from an article he wrote for the January 10
   edition of the German magazine Der Spiegel. His strongly worded essay,
   ``Campaign of Lies,'' argued that Turkey's leaders have tried through
   systematic oppression ``to kill the Kurdish language and culture since
   the founding of the republic.''

   The article caused a furor at a time when the government is trying to
   reconcile demands for democracy by liberals, leftists and Turkey's
   Western allies with deep and widespread fears of the growth of Islamic
   extremism and the intractability of the Kurdish conflict.

   Kemal's prosecution demonstrates the lengths to which Ankara will go
   to silence critics after more than a decade of unofficial civil war
   with Kurdish separatists. The conflict has cost more than 15,000 lives
   and has been marked by rampant human rights abuses.

   ``If I am sentenced, the Turkish Republic won't be able to look
   foreigners in the face,'' the 71-year-old Kemal said recently. He
   wrote in his Der Spiegel article that Turkey ``must not enter

   the 21st century as a nation accursed.''

   About 150 academics, journalists, writers, human rights activists and
   lawyers currently are imprisoned for ``crimes of expression,''
   according to the Ankara-based Human Rights Association. Many, like
   Kemal, were prosecuted under the eighth article of the Turkish Law
   Against Terrorism, which states that any ``written or spoken
   propaganda'' that threatens the ``indivisible integrity of the state''
   is punishable with a prison sentence of two to five years.

   Nearly 8,000 others are either appealing jail sentences or awaiting
   trial for alleged violations of Article 8.

   Intellectual ``terrorists'' now in prison include Fikret Baskaya, an
   economics professor who wrote a book criticizing Turkey's
   socioeconomic development and its underlying ideology; writer Haluk
   Gerger, who argued that violent movements emerge when peaceful
   channels for dissent are closed; and sociologist Ismail Besikci, who
   has spent more than a decade in jail for his studies of the Kurds.

   ``Yashar Kemal is one of many similar cases,'' said Yavuz Onen,
   president of the independent Human Rights Foundation of Turkey. ``But
   he is one of the best-known personalities ever prosecuted under the
   anti-terror law, so he created quite a stir.''

   Kemal's Der Spiegel essay prompted heated debate in the Turkish media.


   Although some columnists said Kemal had betrayed the country, others
   rallied to his defense in an unprecedented show of support for freedom
   of expression.

   ``Even those who give the appearance of being the most democratic of
   people accused Yashar Kemal of being a traitor,'' wrote the weekly
   magazine Aktuel, which called his piece a ``writing event dividing
   Turkey.''

   Throwing down the gauntlet, publisher Erdal Oz released a collection
   of controversial essays -- including Kemal's Der Spiegel article --
   titled ``Freedom of Thought and Turkey.'' The book was signed by about
   1,080 writers and artists in an attempt to force the state to charge
   them all under the same law as Kemal. An additional 50,000 people
   signed declarations supporting them.

   ``While Kemal got bad press, he catalyzed this sort of lobby among
   writers and artists,'' said Semih Idiz, an editor and columnist at the
   Turkish Daily News.

   ``This hasn't happened before. But it also shows the intelligentsia is
   divided on the Kurdish issue. It's something like the McCarthy period
   in your country -- Will people fall behind the government line no
   matter what? It's a choice between `my country right or wrong' and
   `democracy right or wrong.' ''

   Turkey is substantially more democratic today than in 1983, when
   civilians returned to power after three years of military
   dictatorship. Discussion of the Kurdish issue -- once strictly taboo
   -- is now a national pastime, and the formerly prohibited Kurdish
   language is now legal. About a quarter of Turkey's 60 million people
   are of Kurdish origin.

   But the government's fight to subdue the separatist Kurdistan Workers'
   Party, which uses terrorist tactics in its war for Kurdish autonomy,
   have stalled long-promised constitutional reforms. Kurdish-language
   education and TV is still banned under the rationale that it will
   weaken national unity, and 10 predominantly Kurdish southeastern
   provinces are under oppressive emergency law.

   Kemal's case could scarcely have come at a worse time for the Turkish
   government, which is eager to prove that its talk of democratization
   is more than just talk since it signed a customs union with the
   European Union early this month. Ratification of the agreement by the
   European Parliament is conditional upon Turkey taking immediate steps
   to improve human rights.

   Prime Minister Tansu Ciller has been promising democratic reforms
   since she took office in the summer of 1993. But a much-heralded
   ``democratization package'' discussed last year never reached the
   parliamentary floor, and a new year's pledge to reform the
   constitution has not materialized.

   On March 14, eager to maintain momentum toward the customs union,
   Ciller again outlined a number of proposals, including a general
   amnesty for all political prisoners of conscience and a gradual
   lifting of the state of emergency in the southeast.

   But Turks are skeptical that real progress will emerge from the
   current parliament, which is dominated by conservative hard-liners who
   view democratization as a ``softening'' on terrorism. Turkey's
   powerful generals, generally given a free hand in the southeast, also
   resist reform.


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 + Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)