Turkish writers watch their backs

March 1, 2007

After an editor's killing, a nationalist resurgence
has chilled literary life.

By Laura King, Times Staff Writer

ISTANBUL, TURKEY — At a recent dinner party on the
shores of the Bosporus, the bookish chatter among the
Turkish writers and academics present took a sudden
grim turn: Are you under police protection yet?

"We were all comparing notes about which of us had
only one bodyguard and which of us had two, and we
joked a little about being in competition with each
other over this," said journalist and novelist Perihan
Magden, who was among those placed under police
protection after threats by ultranationalists. "It was
comical, but also very tragic."

In the wake of the January assassination in Istanbul
of prominent ethnic Armenian editor Hrant Dink,
Turkey's intellectual community is feeling under siege
to a degree not experienced in decades.

A mass outpouring of dismay and revulsion when Dink
was gunned down, illustrated by a funeral that drew
tens of thousands of mourners, has given way to a
powerful right-wing backlash. Shadowy nationalist
groups have issued chilling threats against authors
and thinkers who, like Dink, speak out against
Turkey's official denial that the mass killings of
Armenians beginning in 1915 constituted genocide, or
on the power of the Turkish military, or the status of
minority Kurds.

As a result, novelists are canceling book tours,
once-outspoken professors are maintaining a low
profile, and crusading columnists like Magden wonder
whether their words will wind up costing them their
lives.

The man who temporarily stepped in for Dink has been
afraid to put his name on the masthead of Agos, the
bilingual Armenian Turkish newspaper his slain
colleague edited.

"It's a real climate of fear," said Eugene Schoulgin,
a board member of the writers group PEN, which
together with other international organizations has
been lobbying for repeal of Article 301, a provision
in the Turkish penal code that makes it a criminal
offense to "denigrate Turkishness."

Many intellectuals had hoped that the brazen daylight
shooting of Dink, who received a suspended sentence of
six months in jail in 2005 over his views on the
slayings of Armenians, would prove a catalyst for
abolishing Article 301. Turkey's curbs on freedom of
expression are seen as a significant obstacle as the
government seeks to advance the country's bid for
membership in the European Union.

But amid the increasingly polarized atmosphere, many
observers have grown more pessimistic than ever about
prospects for reform. And in this election year,
Turkish political parties, even mainstream ones, are
reluctant to alienate voters with nationalist
leanings, who make up a substantial chunk of the
electorate.

Analysts point to Turkey's historical tendency to dig
in its heels in the face of reform pressures from the
outside world. They argue that the outcry over Article
301 is not only hardening domestic resistance but may
even be adding to an already profound ambivalence over
forging closer bonds with the West.

"Sometimes international groups create a reaction in
Turkey, an overreaction, because the language they use
is not always constructive," said Onur Oymen, an
opposition politician and former Turkish ambassador to
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "Critics
should be careful not to produce the opposite reaction
to that sought."

Police officials have not disclosed how many dissident
public figures have been placed under protection since
Dink's killing, but estimates range into the dozens,
including acclaimed fiction writer Elif Shafak, who
was taken to court last year under Article 301. Her
case, like most of the scores of similar prosecutions,
ended with the charges being dropped.

Shafak, who was a close friend of Dink, has sharply
curtailed appearances to promote her new novel, "The
Bastard of Istanbul," a family saga whose complex plot
line hinges on the Armenian killings. Now under police
protection, she wrote in an e-mail that she remained
"in mourning" and declined to be interviewed.

Shafak's husband, Eyup Can, told the Hurriyet
newspaper about the couple being shadowed by a police
guard whenever they ventured out. "He is inside your
life," he said.

Shafak was so distraught after Dink's slaying, he
said, that she was unable to breastfeed their baby.

"This is the situation of writers in this country
today," he said. "It is really bad."

Orhan Pamuk, the winner of last year's Nobel Prize in
literature and another writer to run afoul of Article
301, stood outside Dink's office hours after the Jan.
19 assassination and publicly declared that the editor
"was killed because of his ideas, ideas that aren't
acceptable to the state."

Pamuk, who has long been vilified on nationalist
websites, was subsequently singled out for a seeming
threat by Yasin Hayal, who police say has confessed to
helping orchestrate the Dink killing, including
recruiting the 17-year-old alleged gunman, Ogun
Samast.

"Orhan Pamuk, better be wise!" Hayal called out as he
was being taken into an Istanbul court in January. "Be
wise."

Pamuk has since canceled a series of readings and
other scheduled appearances in Germany and is now
staying in the United States.

His Turkish publisher declined to say whether Pamuk
had left the country because of safety concerns or was
honoring prior academic commitments. Fellow writers
said that the Nobel laureate was placed under tight
security after a flurry of threats and that when he
departed, police guards escorted him to the airport.

Many here say the intimidation of intellectuals brings
back vivid memories of the 1970s and '80s, when
political violence frightened many journalists and
academics into silence.

Police protection is of scant comfort to those who
believe the government is passively or actively
complicit in the threats against them.

After Dink's killing, allegations surfaced that police
had ignored explicit threats against him. And after
the arrest of the suspected gunman, TV footage leaked
out that showed the man striking triumphal poses with
arresting officers, who could be seen helping him
carefully position a Turkish flag for the cameras.
Investigations of both incidents are continuing.

Another former Article 301 defendant, Ankara
University political science professor Baskin Oran,
wrote about a months-long ordeal after he sought
police protection because of a series of threats that
arrived by text message, fax and e-mail. The messages
called him an "enemy of Turks" and a "dog," with one
vowing, "Turkish nationalists will cut you up one
day."

When the identities of some of those menacing him were
traced electronically, he said, a prosecutor summoned
him and put him face to face with the authors of the
threats, urging that he listen to their grievances.
Oran said he was frightened and furious at the
suggestion, which he refused.