April 28, 2002

A TURKISH publisher accused of disseminating separatist propaganda was acquitted recently after one of his authors -- the celebrated American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky -- appeared in an Istanbul court and asked to be tried alongside him. 

In a case highlighting the limited freedom of expression permitted in discussions about Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish minority, the director of Aram Publishing, Fatih Tas, escaped the one-year jail sentence he had been anticipating. 

“The prosecutor clearly made the right decision,” said Professor Chomsky, who had petitioned to be named as a co-defendant. 

“I hope it will be a step toward establishing the freedom of speech in Turkey that we all want to see. I am here to express support for the writers, journalists and human rights activists who are willing to take serious risks.” 

A delighted Mr Tas, who last year published American Interventionism, a Turkish translation of Prof Chomsky's essays, declared after the trial: “If (he) hadn't been here ... we wouldn't have expected such a verdict.” Mr Tas still faces charges over books which question Turkey's human rights record. 

In one of the essays, Prof Chomsky, who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alleged that the Turkish government had “launched a major war in the south-east against the Kurdish population” and described the conflict as “one of the most severe human rights atrocities of the 1990s”. 

The Kurds, he wrote, “have been miserably oppressed throughout the whole history of the modern Turkish state”. 

Turkish security forces waged a 15-year campaign against Kurdish rebels which resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 people and the destruction of thousands of villages. The fighting effectively ceased with the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' party, in 1999. 

If Mr Tas had been convicted, it would have been a severe embarrassment for the Turkish government, which this week hosted a meeting of foreign ministers from EU and Muslim states. 

Turkey is keen to develop its position as a bridge between the two civilisations. The parliament recently passed reforms aimed at permitting greater freedom of expression, to enhance Turkey's application to join the EU. 

In October last year the government altered the constitution to legalise Kurdish-language television and radio broadcasts, in an attempt to conform to EU human rights standards. This week, however, Turkey's radio and television high council, which oversees the broadcast media, suspended the licence of a local TV station for a year for “playing music with Kurdish lyrics”. 

Scores of Turkish writers and journalists have been jailed in the past under anti-terrorist laws which forbid criticism of the state's conduct of the war in the south-east. -- GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE