Bookplanet: Turkey keeps prosecuting its writers (and you thought it wanted to get into the EU)

When the pen is threatened by the sword
Trevor Royle on Turkey's persecution of its writers

Writers make handy scapegoats when despotic regimes decide to defend the indefensible and in so doing make themselves look utterly ridiculous. Being independent and working largely in isolation, authors are soft targets and despite the excellent work undertaken by organisations such as International Pen and Sara Whyatt's Writers in Prison Committee, far too many of their kind are being banged up all over the world for the crime of daring to speak their mind.

The latest victim is the Turkish writer Perihan Magden who will appear this week before a court in Sultanhamet, Istanbul on charges that she “turned people against military service”. For the crime of insisting that conscientious objection to military service is a human right -- all Turkish men are subjected to 15 months compulsory service in the armed forces -- she faces three years imprisonment in conditions which will be pretty grim. As the movie Midnight Express showed all too vividly, Turkish jails are not for the squeamish.

Best known for her novels 2 Girls and The Messenger Boy Murders, Magden is no stranger to controversy and has been praised by the leading Turkish author Orhan Pamuk for her “combative independence and steely conscience”. Pamuk knows what he is talking about -- earlier this year he, too, faced prosecution, in his case for allegedly “insulting Turkishness”. He only escaped on a technicality.

What makes these cases more worrying is that they are neither isolated nor unusual and are usually prompted by the military authorities. Around 80 Turkish writers are currently facing prosecution on a variety of charges ranging from insulting the state to questioning government policy.

The trials have also been accompanied by a fair degree of gratuitous violence. Witnesses and the judiciary have been intimidated by braying mobs inside and outside the courts and in one case, the trial of Armenian Turkish editor Hrant Dink, there were reports of an attempted lynching. All this makes for disquieting reading at a time when Turkey is on the verge of becoming a member of the European Union.

There have already been numerous complaints about Turkey's human rights record and its refusal to allow freedom of expression. Questions have also been asked about the extent to which the Turkish military has a free rein and seems to exist outside government control. Coming on top of existing concerns about the influence of Islamic fundamentalism within the country and the prosecution of the Kurdish population, it's not difficult to see why the writers' trials are causing so much dismay in the literary community.

In the wider scheme of things there are in fact very few reasons to deny Turkey membership of the EU. Since the 1920s, when the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk separated religion from the state, Turks have longed to be part of Europe. And let's not forget, in the days of the Ottoman Empire they ruled most of southeast Europe, and as far north as the Balkans.

Clerics have no political role, religious parties can and have been outlawed, the education system is secular and Turkey has emerged as a modern and vibrant country with much to offer its European neighbours. That's what makes the prosecution of the Turkish writers all the more disappointing. No country aspiring to be considered civilised should prosecute people for expressing opinions that go against the grain; the preservation of artistic and literary freedoms are central to any democracy.

By offering the hand of friendship to Turkey last autumn the EU acknowledged that Islam is central to Europe's identity and not a persecuted minority. Now, more than ever, Turkey must reciprocate by ending these preposterous prosecutions.