Turkish classical musician Fazil Say is best known for his piano work, but it's the actions he took using a computer keyboard that have thrust him into the limelight in an unexpected -- and disturbing -- way.
Yesterday, Say -- who has received rave reviews for his playing and has performed in concert halls around the world -- was given by an Istanbul court a suspended 10-month prison sentence for insulting Islam and offending Muslims -- in Twitter posts. Although he was spared the indignity of being sent to jail, Say could find himself locked up if he is convicted of similar offenses during the next five years.
The offending tweets? In one, Say forwarded an excerpt from an 11-th century poem written by the famed Omar Khayyam. “You say that the rivers flow with wine, is heaven a tavern? You say that you will give every believer two very beautiful women, is heaven a brothel?” the poem says. In another tweet, the pianist -- a self-declared atheist -- suggests the rapid call to prayer he heard coming from a nearby Istanbul mosque might have been given by a muezzin eager to get his work done and head out for a drink.
Looking at the case in a piece for the Al-Monitor website, Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a well-known civil rights lawyer in Turkey, suggests Say's conviction is part of a disturbing trend in Turkey regarding the prosecution of those deemed to have insulted religion or Islam. From Cengiz's article:
[H]is conviction is just another alarming development in Turkey. In recent years, the Turkish judiciary seemed to be over-sensitive about protecting religion and religious values against those who allegedly insult Islam. The case against Say was only one of those that was brought against artists and bloggers for allegedly insulting Islam and religion. Cartoonist Bahadir Baruter was also prosecuted in 2011 for the publication of a cartoon he drew in Penguen humor magazine. In this particular cartoon, the slogan “There is no God, religion is lie,” appeared on the wall of a mosque. A blogger called A.M.S was sued for an article he wrote with the title of “Absurdity of Religion.”
Amnesty International, in its most recent report, titled “Turkey, Decriminalize Dissent: Time to Deliver on the Right to Freedom of Expression,” also expressed its concerns about the use of Article 216 of Turkish penal code. The group also stated that, “In practice, Article 216 has been used to prosecute criticism of dominant beliefs and power structures … ”
Amnesty International was also giving Fazil Say’s case as an example of abuse of Article 216 in its report published in March 2013.
As Bloomberg View's Marc Champion points out in a good column about the case, while prosecuting public figures for insulting Islam may be a relatively new development in Turkey, convicting them for things they said is definitely not. From his piece:
The old fiercely secular regime used the judicial system to supress criticism of the Turkish Republic's founder, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, among other nationalist taboos. The current government has merely re-targeted the repressive laws it inherited, rather than eliminating them.
The current government of Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has taken steps over the years to correct some of the major flaws in the Turkish judicial system regarding freedom of expression (though, as Amnesty International recently laid out in a good report on the subject, major problems still remain). For example, the notorious Article 301, which was used to prosecute comments Nobel-prize winning author Orhan Pamuk made about the Armenian issue, has been modified in order to prevent prosecutors from being able to use it as frequently as they once had.
But Say's case and his conviction show that despite these changes, the Turkish state's basic flawed understanding of what constitutes freedom of expression and its fear of truly free speech has not changed.
[UPDATE - In a new column in Today's Zaman, analyst Yavuz Baydar reminds readers that Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was himself given a 10-month prison sentence back in 1998 for reciting a poem. In Erdogan's case, it was a matter of the secularist establishment going after what it perceived to be a dangerous figure associated with Turkey's Islamist movement. But, as Baydar writes: "In essence, there is absolutely nothing that distinguishes both verdicts, with 15 years in between, from each other." Erdogan, meanwhile, has so far refused to comment about Say's conviction.]
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