Fréderike Geerdink - independent journalist

Law about ‘Turkishness’ is a diplomatic toy

18/01/2008/1 Comment/in Other /by fgeerdink

Altering the ban on insulting ‘Turkishness’ will not help freedom of expression. It is better to get rid of Turkish taboos, says Fréderike Geerdink.

(published in daily newspaper De Volkskrant, opinion page ‘Forum’)

The Turkish government is working on an amendment to article 301 of the Penal Code, the article that forbids insulting ‘Turkishness’. The European Union has been pressing for that for years, as it is deemed to restrict freedom of speech. After all, lots of academics, writers and journalists, among them Nobel prize laureate Orhan Pamuk and the assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, were sued and sometimes convicted for breach of this law. In fact they did nothing more than express their opinion.

Article 301 is however mostly a toy in the negotiating circus between Turkey and the EU. Of course it’s no coincidence that Turkey revives moves to change the law after the EU in December decided to continue accession talks with Turkey. Europe can be satisfied for now, but it doesn’t help the writers and journalists prosecuted in the past.
Article 301 is not the real problem. It provides the means for nationalist lawyers and state institutions, like the army, to sue people who are brave enough to criticize the official Turkish view on, for example, the Kurdish question or the mass killings of Armenians almost a hundred years ago. And it is the reason why the legal system cannot succeed in handling these cases independently and dismiss them right away by referring to the freedom of expression.

The nadir was reached with the indictment of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. He wrote an article about his wish that the Armenian community both in Turkey and in the diaspora should focus more on the future instead of on the past. He was totally misinterpreted and was prosecuted and convicted for violating article 301, after which negative publicity drove a teenage nationalist to assassinate Dink with a few gunshots. In the demonstrations following the assassination, exactly one year ago on January 19th, article 301 was mentioned as indirectly responsible for Dink’s murder. An understandable reaction, but the real problem was the way Dink, as a courageous and pacifist representative of the Armenian community in Turkey, was wilfully misunderstood and indicted.
If article 301 is altered, there are enough other articles that can be used to take writers and journalists to court. All of them, just like 301, are vague enough to allow a broad interpretation. Articles 215 and 216, for example, which forbid setting people up against each other or stirring up hatred and enmity. These articles, and others, are already used regularly, and are even used very selectively against writers, journalists and publishers who oppose the common opinions.

To really achieve freedom of expression, Turkey has to get rid of the fear of openly discussing matters that are still taboo. That includes not only the mass killings of Armenians almost a hundred years ago, and the way the Kurdish question was handled for so long (and still is handled). It also concerns the glorification of Atatürk, the power of the army and a too strong nationalism. In such a Turkey, even article 301 could exist without being a threat to freedom of expression.

Fréderike Geerdink is a freelance correspondent in Turkey

Teamwork

14/01/2008/0 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdink

My central heater wasn’t working properly. My landlord lives above me, which is useful in these sorts of situations. I heard him on the stairs in the hallway, asked him to come in and explained the problem. He would send somebody to fix it, he promised. And so he did, the very next day. And I witnessed in my home something I see all too often here: not only the heater guy came, but also his helper, and the landlord himself, and his teenager son, who will probably be a landlord himself one day, and who is, I guess, learning the job. I offered them all house slippers, as they were nice enough to take off their dirty shoes before they came in. And there they were, three men doing nothing but watch the fourth one work. They were all looking very seriously at the work in progress. Fifteen minutes later, the heater was fixed. They took their slippers off, they all shook my hand and I thanked them a lot. Teamwork, I love it.

The first disaster

11/01/2008/1 Comment/in Other /by fgeerdink

I had an interview with Sibil, a young Armenian Turk. She’s in ‘Hadig’, a group of young Armenian people who want to carry on Hrant Dink’s legacy. Hrant Dink, the Turkish Armenian journalist and founder of bilingual newspaper Agos, was murdered almost a year ago. One of Dink’s missions was to make the Armenian community in Turkey more visible. After the mass killings of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman empire, after discriminating tax laws, after riots against Greeks in the fifties that also affected Armenians, and after Armenians were falsely accused of having links with the PKK, the Armenian community never had any reason to open up, let alone to be proud of their identity. Hrant Dink tried to change that and inspired many people.
After Dink was killed, most Armenians said: See, another disaster for us, nothing will ever change. For Sibil, 24 years old, it was different. She and some friends of similar age formed Hadig (Armenian for ‘seed’) and organised a sound installation: 19 columns and articles by Hrant, recorded by a selection of fairly famous Turks, to be heard on 19 headphones in a small exhibition space in down-town Istanbul. Above the headphones are portraits of Dink. Many people come to listen. ‘We want Dink’s voice to be heard’, Sibil explains. But, I ask her, how can you still hope for change, given the history of the Armenians? ‘For me’, she answers, ‘the murder of Hrant was the first disaster to hit the Armenian community that I actually was alive to experience. The rest I only know from stories. That’s in the past, and I hope my first disaster will be the last. Maybe my actions will help to accomplish that.’
It was good to meet Sibil. And to see that Hrant Dink was not the only brave and hopeful Armenian in Turkey.