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Nadire
Mater is accused of "insulting" the Turkish military
in her book Mehmedin Kitabi. Photo courtesy Writers
in Prison Committee of International P.E.N.
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The Chief Justice of
the Beyoglu Second Criminal Court:
In recent months, men
of different ages suspended their civilian lives for 28 days as
if they were going on holiday. These men, who are referred in
the news media as "Mehmed Beys" (Mr. Mehmeds), completed their
compulsory military service, which they had postponed for years,
by paying 15,000 German marks. These men, whose numbers are said
to reach 70,000, have once more revived the tradition of storytelling
about boot camp, a tradition which had suddenly come to an end
about fifteen years ago. Now it is time for these Mehmed Beys
to narrate in the coffee houses, cafés or bars, anecdotes
from their 28 days in the military....
The Mehmed Beys speak,
and tell us how they enjoyed military service, while Mehmeds of
the age of their own sons face death on mountaintops. These Mehmed
Beys are known to all.
In Mehmedin Kitabi,
those who did their military service in the Emergency Case area
during the years 1984-98 spoke out for the first time. But they
preferred to remain anonymous, because what they narrated was
so painful and sad ...
They had remained silent
for 15 years. We, people living in this country, did ask them
anything. When their narratives about their days in military service,
about their lives before and after, about their expectations,
loves, fear, pain, death and resentments, in short, about their
whole lives, were compiled in Mehmedin Kitabi, they struck
a wall of repression and intolerance.
I still cannot comprehend,
nor accept this ban. I cannot accept the charges. I expected the
prosecutor to state his case, in anticipation of some clarification
or justification of the charges against me. However, the prosecutor
has chosen to look back to the Ottoman past and recall the censure
of the West [over] allegations of [the] "Armenian genocide," instead
of explaining why the book violates Article 159 of the Penal Code.
What do the narratives
in this book, or the people who actually lived these stories,
have to do with the West? Instead of providing grounds or evidence
for his accusations, the prosecutor has chosen to be content with
a cliché that "criticism can only come from the West, and
criticism is 'treason,'" a cliché which has nothing to do
with either law or justice. I find this to be proof of the groundlessness
of the charges he has brought against me.
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Mehmedin
Kitabi contained interviews with Turkish soldiers who
fought against Kurdish rebels.
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What connection can
these Mehmeds have with the West, these ex-soldiers who talked
in the book and whose stories were related without adding even
a word? They are the young people who come from the country, from
Trabzon, Malatya, or Aydin, and whom we consider to be heroes
as long as they [remain] anonymous. They are young men who survived
[their military service] as the result of pure chance. They are
the young people who shared the same dangers as buddies who met
their deaths right next to them. Some of them are "gazis" (veterans),
that is, they have been wounded in combat. What is related in
the book, in their own words, is their lives. According to the
logic of the prosecutor, those heroes ... [become] "Turk-hating
Westerners" when they decide to take stock of their lives.
In fact, the prosecutor's
own attitude resembles that of the West much more closely than
do the attitudes of the young people who draw a balance sheet
of their lives in this book. During the conflict, which lasted
for 15 years, the governments of the U.S., Germany, France, and
Italy, always justified arms sales to Turkey by arguing: "There
may have been excesses in war, but Turkey is defending herself
against terrorism. We should not accuse, but rather support our
NATO ally" ...
I really wonder what
sort of connection the prosecutor could have formed between the
events narrated in this book and the allegations of "genocide
against the Armenians." If any verdict had to be reached on the
basis of this book, we would have had to note that a Turkish citizen
of "Armenian" descent was among the Mehmeds [who took] part in
the war, and we would have had to conclude that the Armenians
who live in Turkey are drafted for military service just like
other citizens. In order to reach any other conclusion, we would
have to go beyond the scope of the book. But here, the subject
of this trial is this book, and nothing else.
The prosecutor, in
an attempt to counter the expert opinion pointing to the objectivity
and impartiality of the book, poses the question of why no one
of the relatives of "Basbaglar massacre" victims was interviewed.
... I am led to believe
that the prosecutor either never read the book ..., or never noticed
its particular focus. Furthermore, the prosecutor as a result
of his own reasoning ends up suggesting that, in effect, the Armed
Forces have resorted to massacres in their operations. If, in
order not to be considered "one-sided", and to be "objective,"
I had included interviews with the relatives of "Basbaglar massacre"
victims, this could only have been necessitated by my having mentioned,
elsewhere, the occurrence of some other "massacre."
| "I
am led to believe that the prosecutor either never read the
book ..., or never noticed its particular focus." |
Is this really the
view that the prosecutor takes of the "conflict in the Southeast"?
On the other hand,
who, indeed, perpetrated the massacre of Basbaglar? Seven years
after the incident, the villagers are still demanding, in statements
made to the press, that the government find the culprits. A number
of those who were apprehended as suspects in this case were acquitted
after a few years. They have appealed against the state for compensation
for ... the time they spent unjustly in jail, and [they have]
won these court cases. Thus, in order to comply with the prosecution's
demands, we would first have to know who the perpetrators were.
Even if we were to
... comply with the prosecution's demand for "a more equitable"
approach, we would have had to listen not to the relatives of
the victims of this massacre, but to those who carried it out.
For this book is about [the people] who were part of the conflict,
[and] not about [the] "victims."
The objectivity of
this book can only be judged on the basis of whether it tries
to touch upon all aspects of the process that it tries to examine,
and not on the basis of topics that lie outside its scope. "A
one-sided book" such as the prosecution wants to portray, would
not have included an interview with a young man who survived the
"massacre" on the Bingol highway, where 33 soldiers were killed,
where he lost his hands and feet, and who, as a "gazi" cannot
even marry his beloved.
But as a journalist,
I make a note of the Basbaglar incident for future investigation.
What a book should
be like, what it should include or exclude, concern the author.
I do not accept for a moment that a book should be brought to
trial, but if it should tried, it is self-evident that it should
be judged solely on the basis of what was actually written and
not on what was not [written.]
The other day, while
we were dining at a restaurant, a young waiter claimed that [he
and I] acquainted. It was futile for me to try to place him: we
had not met, but according to this young man who had read Mehmedin
Kitabi, we knew each other. I would have very much liked to be
acquainted with the prosecution in this way.
I have presented my
motivations and my method in bringing forth Mehmedin Kitabi,
both in the statement I made at the first hearing of my trial,
and in the foreword to Mehmedin Kitabi, both in the statement
I made at the first trial hearing, and in the foreword to [the
book.] All the reactions to the book since that day, in both the
local and international press, and from quarters with widely differing
viewpoints, have been unanimous [on one point: the importance
of this work.
I am proud of having
written Mehmedin Kitabi, which has elicited a negative
reaction only from the offices of the General Staff and the public
prosecutor.
The truth is plain
to see: Banning the truth does not eradicate it. Preventing the
Mehmeds from talking does not stop the anxiety of mothers, fathers,
wives and girlfriends who, trying to hide tears, see them off
at bus terminals. For the last five years, it has torn my heart
... to see young people tossing their friends into the air with
slogans of "he will go to the army, and come back alive" as they
see them off. Isn't this slogan, in itself, eloquent for all of
us, including the prosecution?
I completely agree
with the following legal opinion by the court appointed expert:
"Since the book has
a special, subjective and concrete quality, since it conveys specific
events which took place in certain regions, in a literary, in
part documentary, and in part poetic fashion, and since it implicitly
contains the wish that the difficult days our country has gone
through in a certain period should come to an end, there is no
material evidence of contempt or vilification of the armed forces
of the state, as stated in Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code."
However, the prosecutor
has approached the expert opinion in the same way that he has
approached the book: he has taken [isolated] "excerpts" [from
both the book and the opinion,] while ignoring the whole ...
In summary, I agree
with the expert opinion on the case, and I demand that the ban
on Mehmedin Kitabi be lifted, so that Mehmeds may be saved,
and I demand my acquittal.
Beyoglu
Second Criminal Court, Istanbul
August 24, 2000
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