Both professors Oran and Kaboglu case face trial and 5 years in jail on charges of “inciting hatred and enmity and denigration of the judiciary” for having written a report on minority rights in Turkey, report which had been ordered by Turkish Prime Minister. The crime of this report ? It “urged govt to recognize some Muslim groups, such as Kurds, as minorities, sparking debate in media and calling into question Turkish identity in country where all Muslims, regardless of ethnicity, are considered Turks” (New Anatolian).
«It is freedom of thinking that is judged here», stated Ibrahim Kaboglu, a Jurist, facing the Court. «These absurd case is a humiliation for Turkey», said Baskin Oran, who teaches Political Sciences in the university of Ankara. Both were members of the Council for Human Rights depending on Prime Minister. In Autumn 2004, after an asking of PM, they have written a reaport very critical toward Turkish policy and its minorities, talking about ” paranoïd climate” and stressing that «the less offensive revendications concerning self-identity are considered like a will to divide (the State) and then repressed (Libération, 2004 December 15th).
Their document proposed constitutional and legislative amendments in favour of minorities, which would be added to pro-European reforms already adopted. The government had initially tried to make silence on this explosive document, and finally publicly repudiated it.
Nationalist circles make a furious campaign (calling them ‘traitors” and threatening them deadly) against the Academic scholars, and the Prosecutor of Ankara pursued them, with a fantasist, ridiculous and funny indictment that Professeur Oran analyzed the first day of his trial, (February 15th), with a wonderful and whipping rhetoric, full of overpowered but clever irony. These 37 pages of “non-defense against a non-indictement but only an fantaisist stuff” are a chef d’oeuvre of intelligence and civilized position of a professor facing barbary and narrow-minded nationalists.
“Therefore at the expense of diverting the suspicions on my “accomplice†Prof. KaboÄŸlu I hereby, as a precaution, declare that I am not the “pornographic CD sellerâ€. ”
LOOOL
The true face of the Turkish STATE. Again, it is the state working through an agent. The public persecutor is not a person but a means through which this state is defending itself. As Mr. Oran so elegantly demonstrates, this state has no logic, no ethic, no morals… This state is a hasard to humanity. It has to go. Why are the Turks unable to see its true face? I call upon all Turks: free yourselves from this ugly force. We Kurds are doing it, without your help, by the way.
Actually this kind of procurors are not “the state”. As you see some procurors can attack generals, some other attack writers…justice is more or less independant, and the STATE in turkey doesn’t really want writers and intellectuals to be bothered…this indictment is totally ridiculous and has been written by a nationalist moron, but I doubt he was backed by the State
The trouble is that State doesn’t support these writers or intellectuals. In the case of Oran, the Reaport was though an asking of the Prime Minister… but facing the scandal, PM just said : “I was not responsible”… As Oran answered, the Council of Human Rights of the Prime Minister is not an outlawed organization…
And the recent laws or amendments which allow to any crazy asshole to write so such indictment is the emanation of the State too… Erdogan hesitates too much between reforms and conservatism.
Exactly! And as Oran says Prosecutors are not qualified to give academic or scientific advices…anyway his defence is so good that the prosecutor will just look ridiculous
One great pain in the *** in turkey is this association of nationalist lawyers who attack whoever says or writes something in contradiction with their stupid dogmas…
I still wonder what is the name of these genial prosecutor… Did he hide himself now ? :)))