Delusions
and Dissent in Turkey: Then and Now
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Originally published under the title, "The Age of
'Dangerous Turkish Criminals'."
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Ottoman
Sultan Abdulhamid II (1842-1918) was obsessed with silencing his
critics and championed pan-Islamism. Sound familiar?
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There seems to be an epidemic in Turkey. Dozens of ordinary citizens
-- old, young, famous, unknown, even minors -- are being detained for
allegedly insulting Turkey's President (and former Prime Minister), Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.
The 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdulhamid
(or Abdul Hamid) II (1842-1918), was a deeply paranoid man who rarely
travelled, out of fear of assassination. Known in the West as the
"Red Sultan," due to atrocities against non-Muslim minorities
during the fall of the empire, Abdulhamid II ran a network of spies to
crush every crumb of dissent against his iron-fisted rule. The press was
heavily censored. Ideologically, he had illusions of Pan-Islamism, and
loved to appear in public as the champion of Islam against a supposedly
aggressive Christendom.
Sound familiar?
The democratic credentials of
Abdulhamid's ailing empire dangerously resemble those of current day
Turkey.
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Nearly a century after Abdulhamid's death, the democratic credentials
of his ailing empire dangerously resemble those of current-day Turkey,
the "sick man of Europe." Ironically, that country just so
happens to be a member of most Western alliances, including NATO, and a
candidate for full membership in the European Union.
In mid-February, a Turkish man was detained in the northwestern
province of Edirne for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a
protest against the arrest of an activist, who had also allegedly
insulted Erdogan. The man, Kadir Yavas, read out a press statement during
a protest against the arrest of yet a third dissident, Onur Kilic. Both
men belonged to a student protest movement. A few hours later, Yavas was
detained by the police -- also for insulting Erdogan.
About a month earlier, amid a nationwide boycott of schools in protest
of religious education, Kilic had been detained and subsequently
arrested, again for insulting the president.
That same week in February, two more students, Arif Bugra Ugur and
Safak Kurt, were also detained on the same charges, while a 17-year-old
student, identified only by the initials U.H.C., was sentenced
to 14 months in prison for insulting Erdogan (who at the time of the
student's alleged offense was Prime Minister). The student had attended a
demonstration protesting charges against two other students. U.H.C. and
his friends had gathered at a town square to issue Erdogan a satirical
"report card." During the final hearing of his case, the teen
was sentenced first to 12 months in prison on charges of "insulting
a public official." Then the court ruled to increase his sentence to
14 months due to his inappropriate behavior during the trial. Then the
court reduced it to seven months because the defendant is a minor.
Mercifully, because there have been no previous criminal charges against
U.H.C., the court then decided to put him on probation for three
years.
A few days later, a Turkish comedian was detained for failing to pay
damages to Erdogan. The director/actor Haldun Aciksozlu, known for his
stand-up comedy show "Laz Marx" had been ordered to pay 6,000
liras (about $2,300) after making a statement in 2011 that the court
found insulting. Aciksozlu
was arrested at the Ataturk International Airport while leaving for
Germany.
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16-year-old
Mehmet Emin Altunses (center) was arrested and charged with the crime
of insulting Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by allegedly
chanting "chief of theft, bribery and corruption" during a
protest.
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Apparently, Erdogan's law enforcement is at least equal and
undiscriminating when it targets dissident voices.
Merve Buyuksarac, an industrial designer, writer and a former Miss
Turkey, now faces
up to two years in prison for an Instagram post that prosecutors
claim "insulted" the Turkish president. The 26-year-old
Buyuksarac had merely shared a quote from the satirical The Master's Poem
-- in which verses from the Turkish national anthem are used to criticize
Erdogan. In her testimony, she said that she "may have quoted a
poem," believed to be from a Turkish satirical magazine, but soon
deleted it after a friend warned her she could have committed a crime.
Buyuksarac was investigated and detained in January. An Istanbul court
will decide on whether to proceed with the case.
On March 6, the trial of 16-year-old Mehmet Emin Altunses, who is charged
with insulting Erdogan, was delayed shortly after it began, after his
lawyer objected to the court's decision to try the case behind closed
doors, and asked that the judges be replaced. The judges halted the trial
for about 15 minutes after it started, then adjourned the case until
April 3.
Last December, Altunses was in the middle of lessons at school when
the police officers came in to detain him. He is accused of targeting
Erdogan by chanting "chief of theft, bribery and corruption"
during a student protest rally.
Apparently, the age of "dangerous Turkish criminals" is
repeating itself in modern day Turkey, in its heirs to Abdulhamid's
judiciary.
In early March, a 13-year-old boy in a town in western Turkey was dragged
out of class by police and arrested, because of a Facebook post that
prosecutors deemed insulting to Erdogan.
The boy, identified by his initials, U.R.E., is described by various
newspapers as being in the seventh or eighth grade. He confessed to the
police that he posted on Facebook but the contents of his post remain
unclear.
Local newspapers reported that U.R.E. and his father were taken to the
regional prosecutor's office and later released, though authorities are
demanding a psychiatric evaluation for the child. The court handling the
case has stated that it is awaiting the results of U.R.E.'s psychiatric
evaluation before deciding whether to pursue criminal charges behalf
against the teen.
The teen's father, in comments to the press, called for the government
to use its resources to crack down on corrupt government officials rather
than on children expressing themselves on social media. He is also
accusing the police of "traumatizing" his son by entering his
classroom to arrest him in front of his peers.
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Journalist
Can Dundar faces four-and-a-half years in prison for insulting the
president.
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At the end of February, Can Dundar, one of Turkey's most prominent
journalists, and editor-in-chief of the secular daily Cumhuriyet,
was summoned
by a prosecutor to testify over his remarks in an interview.
Ironically, he had interviewed a prosecutor who was in charge of a
massive corruption investigation implicating Erdogan, his sons, four
cabinet ministers, their sons and some government-friendly businessmen. A
criminal investigation was launched against Dundar for his remarks in the
interview; his words allegedly insulted Erdogan.
More recently, an eccentric
Turkish singer joined the list of dangerous criminal suspects, this
time on charges of insulting not Erdogan, but Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu. "It is an honor to be detained for my opinions, not for
stealing or for corruption," Atilla Tas said on his Twitter account,
which has more than 720,000 followers, after he was detained by the
police for insulting the prime minister.
According to the newspaper Hurriyet, since his tenure began
last August, President Erdogan has filed criminal complaints against more
than 60 people for insulting him.
Sadly, there are no such statistics from Abdulhamid's time to compare
the systematic crackdown on dissents in Ottoman times to the systematic
crackdown in current Turkish times.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is
a columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East
Forum.
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