'Insulting Turkishness'
The Gray Lady notes that the Turks are busily prosecuting all and sundry for the crimes of 'insulting Turkishness':
Not a week after a court dropped the case against a best-selling Turkish novelist, another well-known writer was charged with the same crime, one of the most ambiguous and contentious here, that of “insulting Turkishness.” Hrant Dink, the newly accused editor of an Armenian-language newspaper, Agos, takes the charges — those against him and scores of other writers and publishers — as positive news.“It is something good for Turkey” said Mr. Dink, though he faces the prospect of three years in jail. “It is good for the dynamism. There is a strong movement from inside, and I can say for the first time we are seeing a real democratic movement.”
But some of the accused say that the turmoil is forcing a national debate about what it truly means to be a democracy — and that, they say, is pushing democracy forward, even if painfully...[Another writer, Ipek Calister, went on trial on Thursday on charges of insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, in a biography of Ataturk’s wife.]...“Freedom of expression is different from insult and denigration, and has limits in the world,” said Kemal Kerincsiz, a leader of the lawyers group. “Our system has to protect itself at the verge of insults against the state and the Turkish identity.”
Re the last line, and the absurdity of a law against libelling the dead, I do wonder what a British equivalent of this law would be like..... Suggestions?
Not a week after a court dropped the case against a best-selling Turkish novelist, another well-known writer was charged with the same crime, one of the most ambiguous and contentious here, that of “insulting Turkishness.” Hrant Dink, the newly accused editor of an Armenian-language newspaper, Agos, takes the charges — those against him and scores of other writers and publishers — as positive news.“It is something good for Turkey” said Mr. Dink, though he faces the prospect of three years in jail. “It is good for the dynamism. There is a strong movement from inside, and I can say for the first time we are seeing a real democratic movement.”
But some of the accused say that the turmoil is forcing a national debate about what it truly means to be a democracy — and that, they say, is pushing democracy forward, even if painfully...[Another writer, Ipek Calister, went on trial on Thursday on charges of insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, in a biography of Ataturk’s wife.]...“Freedom of expression is different from insult and denigration, and has limits in the world,” said Kemal Kerincsiz, a leader of the lawyers group. “Our system has to protect itself at the verge of insults against the state and the Turkish identity.”
Re the last line, and the absurdity of a law against libelling the dead, I do wonder what a British equivalent of this law would be like..... Suggestions?
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on Friday, October 06, 2006 at 7:47 am.
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We need more of this - to ensure that they never get into the EU. Letting them in is a moonbat idea anyway.
I dont like buggery or big moustaches so i think that probably makes me anti turk
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