KurdistanObserver.com

Doubts Over Free Speech Dog Turkey's Path To EU

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Publisher Fatih Tas has faced more prosecutions than birthdays in testing limits on freedom of expression in Turkey -- an issue dogging the country's path towards the European Union.

The 26-year-old will go on trial again on Thursday facing a jail sentence of several years if he is convicted for publishing a book prosecutors say insults the Turkish state and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Tas says he has had some 30 prosecutions. Convicted three times, he has had a prison sentence reduced to a fine on each occasion. Some cases he has won, others have been dropped, but most are continuing.

Similar charges crop up repeatedly in trials of writers, rights activists and trade unionists, causing tension between Ankara and Brussels over curbs on free speech in the largely Muslim country, which started EU membership talks on Oct. 3.

In its annual progress report on Turkey last week, the EU stressed a need for Ankara to bring its freedom of expression laws into line with EU standards and address problems of people prosecuted or convicted for their views.

"Our work is a way of contributing to the democratisation process in Turkey. But these cases show the environment is not ripe for dealing with issues like the role of the military and the Kurdish problem," said Tas, owner of Aram publishing house.

His latest book targeted by prosecutors is a translation of "Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade" by John Tirman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The indictment is based on references to Ataturk's political ideology and testimonies on rights violations by security forces in southeast Turkey in the 1990s at the height of a Kurdish rebellion which has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

The sensitivity of the Kurdish issue was illustrated on Tuesday when Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan boycotted a news conference with his Danish counterpart in protest against the presence of a reporter he said was linked to Kurdish rebels.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen responded by saying that excluding the correspondent would have violated principles of freedom of expression in the EU.

NEW PENAL CODE

In its efforts to address EU concerns, Turkey has taken ambitious reform steps, abolishing State Security Courts and the death penalty and producing a new, less restrictive penal code.

Ankara has vowed to tackle persistent shortcomings but some Turkish analysts say the EU is making unfair demands and there is little more the government can do but monitor the judiciary's implementation of reforms.

"If the judiciary considers there is enough evidence to open a case then how can they expect the government to interfere or order the judiciary what to do?" said Hasan Unal of Ankara's Bilkent University, a sceptic of the EU.

"The EU has double standards regarding Turkey and it only takes an interest when the Kurds or other minority issues are involved," he said.

Erdogan must walk a thin line, boosting the country's human rights record for the sake of the EU process while recognising nationalist sensitivities on subjects such as the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire about the time of World War One.

Turkey's best-known novelist Orhan Pamuk will go on trial next month charged with insulting the state in his comments about the Armenian massacres. On Tuesday, Erdogan distanced himself from the Pamuk trial.

There is no sign of such cases abating. State prosecutors on Tuesday charged two professors with inciting hatred and enmity for calling on Turkey -- in a government-commissioned report -- to expand minorities' rights.

In a separate case, Turkey's Court of Appeals upheld charges of "insulting the judiciary" this week against a Turkish journalist at the English-language Turkish Daily News. Burak Bekdil faces a suspended 20-month prison sentence, but says he will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.