-Caveat Lector-
----Original Message Follows----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rich Winkel)
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: RIGHTS-TURKEY: Prisoners Released, Conscience Still Locked
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 23:17:28 -0500 (CDT)
/** ips.english: 474.0 **/
** Topic: RIGHTS-TURKEY: Prisoners Released, Conscience Still Locked **
** Written 9:06 PM Sep 20, 1999 by newsdesk in cdp:ips.english **
Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 20-Sep-99 ***
Title: RIGHTS-TURKEY: Prisoners Released, Conscience Still Locked
By Ertugrul Kurkcu
ISTANBUL, Sep 20 (IPS) - In leaving the jail where he spent the last
six years for 'press crimes,' 59 year-old sociologist Ismail Besikci
showed last week no thankfulness to the Turkish parliament that
'pardoned' him - ''I have been released, yet I'm not free,'' he said.
Besikci is one of the first dissidents to benefit from a Turkish
Parliament's decision ordering the release of journalists and writers
convicted for their work. The bill was ratified by president Suleyman
Demirel more than two weeks ago.
Cheered by Turkish and Kurdish admirers who gathered in front of the
northwestern Bursa province prison, Besicki left with a van-load of
books, court files and documents, towards his home in Ankara, which he
had last seen in November 1993.
He will have to watch his words, though, because the amnesty is
half-hearted. All those 'pardoned' are legally bound not to commit the
same 'offence' in the next three years or else go back to prison and
serve the rest of their sentences.
The exact number of journalists and writers to be released is yet
uncertain. The government says 32 convicted journalists will be freed
in the following weeks, but the process seems has been slowed-down by
bureaucratic hurdles.
The law excludes those sentenced for delivering speeches. Thus, human
rights activist Akin Birdal and lawyer Esber Yagmurdereli will remain
serving their nine-month jail terms for demanding peace between the
Turkish state and Kurdish rebels.
''This is a sin committed against freedom of conscience,'' says
Besikci, who was sentenced to 79 years and a 20,000 US dollars fine.
for 52 offenses, all related to his writings. He is still awaiting
trial for another 55 accusations.
''Lawmakers expect us to suspend our consciousness for three years in
order to be fully free. You are released but your conscience is still
under arrest. What a pity,'' he said.
''This is cosmetics,'' says Osman Ergin deputy chair of the Istanbul
Bar Association. '
'' With this amnesty, the Turkish government just expects to have a
broader margin in the forthcoming negotiations with the European Union
and the United States, who have been critical of Turkey's poor human
rights records and restrictions on freedom of expression,'' he said.
''Adding insult to injury, the amnesty is being slowed down by local
officials'' - Ergin says . ''Local prosecutors are the least willing to
enforce the law. They transfer the files out of their jurisdiction.''
Cartoonist Dogan Guzel was one of those whose release was delayed by
bureaucratic manoeuvres until Saturday, 18 september.
Sentenced to 50 months for five separate cases under charges of
''diminishing the spiritual identity of the State'', Guzel watched for
two weeks how his file was being moved from the district prosecutor's
office to his superiors' and back.
''According to the Turkish law, holding a person even for one extra
minute is a serious crime, yet I have been staying here for two extra
weeks,'' he angrily said in a telephone interview.
''The prosecutors themselves are committing crimes,'' deputy bar chair
Ergin claims. ''This can not be explained with ordinary bureaucratic
sluggishness.''
''This is the eighth time that I have been released from prison,''
Besicki recalled - ''not counting another four times I had been under
police custody. Yet, none led me to proper freedom.''
He was last imprisoned under charges of separatism for an article
titled ''The Meaning of Kurdish Women's Participation in the Guerrilla
War.'' As his trial proceeded, his was further sentenced for other
articles.
Author of 36 books and numerous articles on the taboo issue of the
Kurdistan, Ismail Besikci has been harassed from the very start of his
academic career.
He was first sentenced to a 13-year term by a military court in 1971 -
under martial-law regulations - for a book ('The Order in East
Anatolia'), an article ('The Origins of Underdevelopment') and for
several lectures at Erzurum University, where he was teaching
sociology.
Released three years later, Besikci was stripped from his teaching post
and expelled from the university. A later work - 'The Official Turkish
Doctrine of History and The Kurdish Question' - once again led him to
jail in 1979.
He has spent a total of 18 years in prison, paying for almost every
line he has published.
Known among Kurds as the 'Blond Scholar' Besicki is an ethnic Turk from
the Central Anatolian town of Corum, who devoted most of his life and
work to researching the Kurdish issue. He claims to have only a
scientific interest in the matter.
''In sociological terms, the Kurdish issue is (officially) dealt with
by disregarding the most basic elements of scientific methodology and
resorting to the crudest falsifications. What I do is fight against
such falsification and ethnic bias in sociology,'' he adds.
Ankara University professor Sevda Alankus welcomed Besikci's release
with excitement. ''We might like his conclusions or not. But we should
pay the greatest respect for a scholar who in spite of unbelievable
pressure has never stepped back from pursuing his thoughts,'' she told
IPS.
Meanwhile, as a few inmates queue for release out of prisons, many
others are queuing in the opposite direction as the parliamentary
pardon does not cover ''offenses'' committed after 23 April, 1999.
One of them is IPS Istanbul correspondent Nadire Mater, who was
indicted last week for her 'Mehmed's Book', a series of interviews with
Turkish former soldiers who fought in the southeast against the Kurdish
Workers party's (PKK) guerrillas.
Mater was charged with ''diminishing the Turkish military,'' for
publishing the former soldiers' feelings and thoughts. She now faces a
six-year prison sentence.
According to specialised lawyers, 34 journalists from the pro Kurdish
daily ''Ozgur Bakis'' are currently being investigated or prosecuted by
State Security courts.
The Turkish government has based the bill's ambiguities and limitations
in the legislation on a Constitutional article that prevents the
Parliament from amnestying ''offenses against the state''.
''The time is not ripe for a thorough amendment of the Constitution
for this requires a two-third majority vote in Parliament,'' prime
minister Bulent Ecevit said.
However, Chief Justice Sami Selcuk, in his startling opening address of
the juridical year last week questioned the Constitution itself. A
''Constitution adopted under military pressure is illegitimate in at
least its formal aspect,'' he said.
''Turkey can not and must not head towards the 21st century as a
country of a people oppressed and silenced by law. Turkey should once
and for all annul the concept of 'crime of conscience','' the judge
said
(END/IPS/eu mm
Origin: Rome/RIGHTS-TURKEY/
----
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