Turkey hints 'freedom-of-speech' case may be dropped
Turkey’s Justice Minister Cemil Cicek criticised EU officials today for pressuring Turkey to stop a freedom-of-expression case against renowned author Orhan Pamuk, but hinted that a court could drop the case.
The trial of Pamuk has emerged as a key test of Turkey’s relations with the European Union, which demands that the country do more to protect freedom of expression.
European monitors at the trial repeatedly stressed that Turkey must stop the trial if it is to push forward with its bid to become the bloc’s first Muslim member. The government, however, is also facing pressure from nationalists angered by Pamuk’s comments.
Cicek pointed out that the European Union had earlier pressed Turkish governments not to interfere with the judiciary.
“Foreign guests must show respect to Turkey’s values and institutions,” Cicek said.
A court on Friday halted the trial of Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known author, saying it needed approval from the Justice Ministry before the case could move forward. Cicek said the file from the court regarding the case reached his ministry this morning.
“The Justice Ministry is examining the case and if there are errors within the justice system, the system will correct them,” Cicek said after a weekly cabinet meeting, at which officials discussed the case.
“No doubt, the judiciary could have made mistakes, but those will be corrected within its own rules,” Cicek said.
Pamuk, the country’s most prominent author, faces charges for insulting the Turkish Republic and “Turkishness” after telling a Swiss newspaper in February that “30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it”.
“For Pamuk to go into taboo areas of Turkish history was … a risk,” Denis MacShane, Britain’s former minister for Europe and a member of the British parliament, wrote in an essay published in The Observer.
“But writers are there to take on the creeping tide of censorship that has been fuelled by religious fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists,” wrote MacShane, who attended the trial as an observer.
Pamuk’s remarks brought up two of the most painful episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I – which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide – and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish south-east.
On Friday, nationalists pelted Pamuk’s car with eggs and hit EU officials who were monitoring the trial. The cabinet is also expected to address the issue of courthouse security.
“This is not the Turkey which civilised Turks long for,” wrote Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper. “Our only relief is that the bullets fired in the past by those trying to silence others with despotism have been replaced with eggs.”