This article contains a list of writers (fiction writers, journalists, academics, etc.) who have been prosecuted by the Republic of Turkey.
Many are prosecuted for statements deemed unpatriotic by official institutions, or by Turkish nationalists. Several disputed laws are often used for this, among others Article 301. On the scale of those prosecutions, and especially the abuse of Article 301, Amnesty International stated that: "The frequency with which Article 301 is being used and the arbitrary nature of its application represent a real threat to freedom of speech in Turkey. Individuals are being harassed and threatened with imprisonment simply for speaking or writing about aspects of Turkish history or culture that do not conform to an imposed nationalist ideal." [1]
The scale of these state-sponsored actions against dissenting opinions is also clear from the fact that in one case, in 1996, 184 of Turkey's leading writers, artists and publishers were indicted under the Anti-Terror Law for "advocacy of separatism" in a single trial at Istanbul State Security Court. [2] The trial was halted in October 1997 by force of a new law passed by the Turkish parliament. [3]
The following is an incomplete list of these prosecuted Turkish writers (and other persons), excluding cases listed at Article 301:
Human rights in Turkey are protected by a variety of international law treaties, which take precedence over domestic legislation, according to Article 90 of the 1982 Constitution. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was not signed by Turkey until 2000. As of today, however, Turkey is party to 16 out of 18 international human rights treaties of the United Nations. The issue of human rights is of high importance for the negotiations with the European Union (EU).
Ragıp Zarakolu is a Turkish human rights activist and publisher who has long faced legal harassment for publishing books on controversial subjects in Turkey, especially on minority and human rights in Turkey.
Article 301 is an article of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, Turkish government institutions, or Turkish national heroes such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It took effect on June 1, 2005, and was introduced as part of a package of penal law reform in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkish membership of the European Union (EU), in order to bring Turkey up to EU standards. The original version of the article made it a crime to "insult Turkishness"; on April 30, 2008, the article was amended to change "Turkishness" into "the Turkish nation". Since this article became law, charges have been brought in more than 60 cases, some of which are high-profile.
Perihan Mağden is a Turkish writer. She was a columnist for the newspaper Taraf. She was tried and acquitted for calling for opening the possibility of conscientious objection to mandatory military service in Turkey.
Michael Dickinson was an English artist, writer and playwright, who was best known for his satirical political collages. He was a member of the Stuckist international art movement. In 2008, Dickinson was arrested and prosecuted in Istanbul for a collage featuring the then Turkish prime minister Erdoğan, but was later acquitted.
İsmail Beşikçi is a Turkish sociologist, philosopher, revolutionist, and writer. He is a PEN Honorary Member. He has served 17 years in prison on propaganda charges stemming from his writings about the Kurdish population in Middle East.
Osman Baydemir is a Kurdish politician, lawyer and human rights activist. He was the mayor of his home town of Diyarbakır from 2004 to 2014. He was a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and also the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP).
Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
Ayşe Nur Zarakolu was a Turkish author, publisher and human rights advocate. She was co-founder, with her husband Ragıp Zarakolu, of notable Turkish publishing house Belge and, in the 1980s, became the director of book-distribution company Cemmay, the first woman in the nation to hold such a position. Zarakolu's publications brought her into frequent conflict with Turkish press laws; in 1997, The New York Times identified Zarakolu as "one of the most relentless challengers to Turkey's press laws". Issues Zarakolu helped publicize in Turkey include the Armenian genocide and human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey. Imprisoned multiple times for her publications, she was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and her legacy continued to face legal challenge in Turkey after her death. She has received multiple awards and honors for her work and the Human Rights Association of Turkey bestows the Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought prize in her honor.
Nurettin Demirtaş was a former Kurdish politician of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Turkey and a member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Eren Keskin is a Kurdish lawyer and human rights activist in Turkey. She is the vice-president of the Turkish Human Rights Association (İHD) and a former president of its Istanbul branch. She co-founded the project "Legal Aid For Women Who Were Raped Or Otherwise Sexually Abused by National Security Forces”, to expose abuses happening to women in Turkish prisons. She has been arrested, imprisoned, and the object of numerous lawsuits in relation to her human rights activities.
Özgür Gündem was an Istanbul-based daily Turkish language newspaper, mainly read by Kurds. Launched in May 1992, the newspaper was known for its extensive reporting on the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, and was regularly accused of making propaganda for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Its editors and staff have frequently been arrested and prosecuted, which resulted in multiple publication bans. Since April 1994, the publication continued under different names until Özgür Gündem was relaunched in 2011.
Pınar Selek is a Turkish sociologist, feminist, and author. She is known for her work on the rights of vulnerable communities in Turkey, including women, the poor, street children, sexual minorities, and Kurdish communities. She is the author of several books published in Turkish, German, and French, and is one of the founding editors of Amargi, a Turkish feminist journal. She currently resides in France where she obtained academic exile from the universities in Strasbourg then Nice under the French PAUSE program, and later a permanent assistant professor position in sociology at Université Côte d'Azur. She became a French citizen in 2017.
Günlük (Daily) was a Turkish newspaper known for its writing about Kurdish issues. It was published from 2009 to 2011.
Mahmut Alınak, is a Turkish lawyer, author and politician, of Kurdish origin, and a former parliamentary deputy.
Erol Önderoğlu is a Turkish-French journalist, and a representative of Reporters Without Borders. In 2016, he was arrested by the Turkish government for his work supporting Ozgur Gundem, a Kurdish newspaper, and accused of supporting terrorists; his arrest was widely criticized as suppression of freedom of the press.
The Diyarbakır Bar Association is an organization of lawyers established in the year 1927. It is one of the 81 members of the Turkish Bars Association. Several of its leaders were prosecuted and one of its presidents was assassinated. The current president is Cihan Aydın and it is constituted by about 1500 lawyers.
The Academics for Peace refers to an association of academics who support a peaceful solution to the Kurdish Turkish conflict. They were established in November 2012 and their first public appearance was in support of hunger strikers in Turkish prisons.
Hasip Kaplan a Turkish politician of Kurdish origin and former member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for several parties, in 2015 he represented the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) in the Turkish Parliament.