AP Worldstream
December 12, 2001 Wednesday
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
DISTRIBUTION: Europe; Britian; Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa; India;Asia; England HEADLINE: Linguist and dissident Chomsky protests court case against hisTurkish publisher
DATELINE: ISTANBUL, Turkey
Noam Chomsky, the American linguist and political dissident, has attackeda court's decision to prosecute his Turkish publisher over a book thatslams Turkey's human rights record.
In a letter to Istanbul-based Aram Publishing, Chomsky expressed sympathywith the firm's director Fatih Tas, who faces a one-year jail sentence ifconvicted on charges of conducting propaganda against the state. The trialis due to begin in February. The charges are "a very severe attack on themost elementary human and civil rights," wrote Chomsky, a professor oflinguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Aram earlier this year published "American Interventionism," a collectionof Chomsky's essays and lectures translated into Turkish.
The book includes a translation of a lecture Chomsky gave at the Universityof Toledo, Ohio in March. In the lecture, Chomsky said the Turkishgovernment had "launched a major war in the Southeast against the Kurdishpopulation," and described the conflict as "one of the most severe humanrights atrocities of the 1990s."
Chomsky said the lecture was based on material from "the leading humanrights organizations ... the most respected standard scholarship, andofficial U.S. government documents."
In an indictment issued last week, Istanbul's State Security Court saidthese and other passages in the book constituted "propaganda against theindivisible unity of the nation."
No charges have been filed against Chomsky himself.
Turkey fought a 15-year war against Kurdish rebels demanding autonomy inthe southeast. The conflict has eased since the Kurdistan Workers' Party,or PKK, announced a unilateral cease-fire in 1999, but the governmentrejected the cease-fire and sporadic fighting continues.
About 37,000 people, mostly Kurdish rebels and civilians, have been killedas a result of the fighting since 1984.
****2******
Dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals have been jailed under strictlaws that forbid criticism of the state's conduct of the war.
New Statesman
December 17, 2001
HEADLINE: When a Turk can lose his liberty for publishing Chomsky, maybeit is logical for God to see Blunkett as Moses
BYLINE: Mark Thomas
No matter what politicians say about the need for them, anti-terror lawshardly ever work. They normally decrease the civil liberties that they aredesigned to protect and, as was the case in Northern Ireland, give peopleanother reason for joining terrorist organisations. However, draconian asinternment is, you really know that things are going pear-shaped when DavidBlunkett introduces laws to prosecute religious hatred. What kind of a Godwould have Blunkett as his voice on earth?
If we are talking about a supreme being who created heaven and earth, Ijust don't see how God would want a mealy-mouthed northerner doing hiswork. If Blunkett is working for the Lord, and man is made in the image ofGod, then we can only conclude that God is a twat (substitute for the wordGod any one of the following that you would find more personally offensive:Allah/Vishnu/Buddha/Jah/A N Other). States have invariably usedanti-terrorist laws as a loophole to dodge their obligations underinternational conventions on human rights. The latest and most bizarre caseoccurred in Turkey. Yes, I am aware that I mention Turkey a lot in thiscolumn, but Blair and his corporate-minded government do manage to excusethe most vile human rights abuse while peddling just about every munitionknown to man to that country's regime. The utter barbarity of the Turkishstate, its ruthless oppression of the Kurds, and a dodgy kebab I once hadin Haringey have hardened the way I view that particular regime.
In November, the European Union praised Turkey for introducing laws thatwill protect the right to freedom of expression, Article 10 of the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights. However, the EU does not mention Turkey's useof anti-terror laws, which directly contravenes the convention andundermines those newly passed laws enshrining freedom of speech. CitingArticle 8 of the anti-terror laws - outlawing 'propaganda against theindivisible unity of the State of the Turkish Republic with its territoryand nation' - Bekir Aldemir, the state prosecuting attorney, has justcharged Fatih Tas, the owner of Aram Publishing in Turkey, at the IstanbulState Security Court for having the audacity to publish AmericanInterventionism, a collection of writings by Noam Chomsky. Fatih faces ayear in prison if found guilty.
To launch a prosecution over words written by one of the world's leadinglinguists seems a tad obscene. In concentrating his prosecution on achapter in the Chomsky book entitled 'Prospects for Peace in the MiddleEast', Aldemir compounds the obscenity. The words that rock the foundationsof the 'indivisible unity' of the Turkish state and could result in a mangoing to jail for a year are these: 'Throughout the 1990s, this place theKurdish region of south-east Turkey saw the most serious crimes againsthuman rights, a still ongoing process . . .' That's it. Those are thewords. You can rearrange them in any order you like, but that is asdangerous as they get. For those words, a man could lose his liberty. Andyet, by justifying these as emergency anti-terror laws, the Turkish statehas sought to avoid prosecution at the European Court of Human Rights forthese most blatant abuses and acts of censorship.
In a world where a man can go to jail for printing such words, but nointernational government raises a murmur, I guess it is entirely logicalthat God should choose David Blunkett to play Moses.
It is possible that Blunkett gets his inspiration from America: after all,the US has recently imprisoned 1,100 people without trial or access to alawyer. In fact, it could have begun the process of privately executingthose it deems to be guilty.
Without wishing to sound like a certain bearded cave-dweller, maybe thereare some comparisons to be made with both the US and a certain demonicex-angel expelled from heaven who had an unhealthy attachment to the numbersix.
You may say: how can you accuse the US of being the great Satan? For astart, if the devil has all the best tunes, why has America ended up withPaul McCartney, spewing out the political equivalent of 'The Frog Chorus'?(Which, after it was used by CNN and the other PR outfits forglobalisation, should be renamed 'Talking About Free Trade'.)
On 7 December, the US Senate passed another bill that is bound to help theflag-burners keep warm through the winter months ahead: namely, SenatorJesse Helms's American Service Members' Protection Act. The bill sought notonly to block the US ratifying the International Criminal Court, butactually to prevent the court's creation.
The court will be prosecute individuals for war crimes. Strangely, the USwants none of this. Maybe that's because the prospect of its own countrymenand -women appearing in the dock is slightly higher than for othercountries. Helms's original bill sought to prohibit military aid to anyNato or 'major' non-Nato country if it ratified the court. This move wasmeant to ensure that the prerequisite number of signatory states - 60 -which would guarantee the creation of the court, was not reached. Althoughthis part of the bill has gone, it still gives the president the right toinvade any country that holds US military personnel under the court's laws,as well as any foreign or non-military personnel working for the US.
Basically, anyone who wants to get Kissinger into court for war crimes willbe invaded by America - and that includes the host country for theInternational Criminal Court, the Netherlands . . . Still worth a go, though.
The trial of Fatih Tas is scheduled for 13 February 2002
********3*********
New Statesman
January 14, 2002
HEADLINE: Kurds are freedom fighters in Iraq, terrorists in Turkey. We'renot quite sure about the status of Iranian Kurds
BYLINE: Tariq Ali
The last round of Indo-Pak fighting over Kashmir in the Himalayansnowlands around Kargil coincided with the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia. Onthat occasion, Indian jets crossed the border and bombed positions insidePakistan. If Nato could, why not India? Now again, as the border tensionincreases, voices in Delhi are asking a similar question: if the UnitedStates can bomb a country and change its government in response toterrorist attacks, why not India? It is an apposite question, as Washingtonknows. The Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have carried out appallingacts of terrorism in Kashmir. The attack on the Indian parliament was anopen provocation, designed to encourage a full-scale war between the twostates. Which is one very good reason why it shouldn't happen. It's truethat Pakistan's military intelligence created these groups and infiltratedthem into Kashmir, just as they did with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It isalso true that, like the Taliban, these groups have acquired a relativeautonomy and can't be switched off like a light bulb. Washington knows thatwell. It couldn't switch off Osama. London knows that, too; it couldn'tswitch off the IRA. The real question is what to do about Kashmir, and thesimple answer is to ask the Kashmiris. Neither Islamabad nor Delhi wants toknow, because they already know: Kashmir would like to be independent.Another reason for the sabre-rattling by Delhi is that it is desperate tobecome a permanent member of the UN Security Council. An Indian friend inDelhi tells me that Tony Blair's visits only feed this frenzy. Why? Becauseif the leader of a medium-sized northern European country can prance aroundand posture in this fashion because his country sits on the SecurityCouncil, the only way to stop his visits is for India to join the council.It's difficult not to sympathise.
Bad news from Sudan. I'm a bit reluctant to publicise the facts in casethey become an excuse for bombing that country again, but help is needed.Abok Alfa Akok, an 18-year-old Christian from Nyala, in southern Darfur,has been sentenced to death by stoning for the 'crime of adultery'. Theauthorities claim that the sentence is legal because it is based on Article146 of the 1991 Penal Code, under which adultery is punishable with:
1) Execution by stoning when the offender is married (muhsan);
2) One hundred lashes when the offender is not married (non-muhsan); 3) Male, non-married offenders may be punished, in addition to whipping,with expatriation for a year.
This is a version of the sharia, or Koranic law, though disputed by manyscholars. It should never be used, and certainly not against those whodon't believe in it in the first place. Letters of protest against thisproposed barbarism should be sent to: His Excellency Lieutenant GeneralOmar Hassan el-Bashir, President of the Republic of Sudan, People's Palace,PO Box 281, Khartoum, Sudan (telex: 22385 PEPLC SD or 22411 KAID SD; fax:+249 11 771 724).
Some good news. This month, the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican isperforming a Peter Sellars collaboration, the opera The Death ofKlinghoffer (see Peter Conrad, Arts, page 40), which became 'controversial'after 11 September. The Boston Symphony Orchestra cancelled its scheduledperformances of choruses that re-enact the events that took place on thecruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985: Palestinian guerrillas took hostages andkilled an American Jew. The Boston Symphony said that 'sensitivity'dictated that it should not perform this particular work. The composer,John Adams, and the librettist, Alice Goodman, responded by saying that theopera offered the 'solace of truth'. The opera's critics, who defended thecancellation, included the distinguished musicologist Richard Taruskin. Hewrote: ' The contrast set the vastly unequal terms on which the conflict ofPalestinians and Jews would be perceived throughout the opera. Theportrayal of suffering Palestinians in the musical language of myth andritual was immediately juxtaposed with a musically trivial portrayal ofcontented, materialistic American Jews.'
In other words, Taruskin was opposed to the politics of the opera, and used11 September to defend censorship. As news of the Barbican's decisionspreads, tickets are likely to be in short supply. I've booked mine.
Back to bad news. Noam Chomsky's Kurdish publisher in Istanbul, AramPublishing House, is being prosecuted by the state for including aferocious essay on the condition of Turkish Kurds in a collection entitledAmerican Inter-ventionism. As we know, Kurds in Turkey are 'terrorists',but Kurds in Iraq are 'freedom fighters' and we're not quite sure about thepresent status of the Iranian Kurds. As the Turkish government is reallykeen to be admitted to the EU, it must assume that publishing Chomsky isproviding succour to 'terrorism' and that it will win wide support. Onehopes that the country closest to Turkey will make its voice heard loud andclear. Step forward Joschka Fischer: pentito extraordinaire and foreignminister of Germany.
*********4********
The Independent (London)
January 24, 2002, Thursday
SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 16
HEADLINE: TURKEY PROSECUTES CHOMSKY PUBLISHER FOR ESSAY ON KURDS BYLINE: Robert Fisk Middle East Correspondent
NOAM CHOMSKY, one of America's greatest philosophers and linguists, hasbecome the target of Turkey's chief of "terrorism prosecution".
Scarcely two months after the European Union praised Turkey for passing newlaws protecting freedom of expression, the authorities in Ankara are usinganti -terrorism legislation to prosecute Mr Chomsky's Turkish publisher.
Fatih Tas of the Aram Publishing House faces a year in prison for daring toprint American Interventionism, a collection of Mr Chomsky's recent essaysincluding harsh criticism of Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish minority. MrChomsky, a linguistics professor at Harvard, is planning to fly to Turkeyfor Mr Tas's first court appearance on 13 February and has already writtento the offices of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights,pointing out that amendments to Turkish law were supposed to have providedgreater freedom of expression, not less.
Mr Chomsky plans to visit the Turkish city of Diyarbakir to meet Kurdish"activists" and it will be a test of Turkey's freedoms to see if he isallowed to visit the area.
In one of his essays, originally a university lecture, he says that "theKurds have been miserably oppressed throughout the whole history of themodern Turkish state ... In 1984, the Turkish government launched a majorwar in the south-east against the Kurdish population ... The end result waspretty awesome: tens of thousands of people killed, two to three millionrefugees, massive ethnic cleansing with some 3,500 villages destroyed."
This, according to the Turks, constitutes an incitement to violence. MrChomsky has been suitably outraged, regarding the trial as part of a muchbroader wave of repression directed against Kurds appealing for greater useof the Kurdish language. Bekir Rayif Aldemyr, Turkey's chief prosecutor,claims that the Chomsky essay "propagates separatism".
A spiky, inexhaustible academic of Jewish origin who has been an inveteratecritic of Israel and especially of the United States, Mr Chomsky'scondemnation of Turkey's treatment of the Kurds - and of the vast armsshipments made to Turkey by the United States - was bound to enrage Ankara.
Mr Chomsky describes the prosecution as "a very severe attack on the mostelementary human and civil rights". The EU, so impressed by those changesin Turkish law last November, has remained silent.
****************