92-yr-old academic thanks supporters after victory
A court on Wednesday tried and immediately acquitted a 92-year-old archaeologist for claiming in a book that Islamic-style head scarves were first worn more than 5,000 years ago by priestesses initiating young men into sex.
The case is one of dozens brought against writers and academics for expressing opinions — and again raises questions about whether Turkey is ready to embrace European values on freedom of expression.
In a trial that lasted less than an hour, the court in Istanbul acquitted Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, an expert on the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotomia of around third millennium B.C., and her publisher of charges of insulting religious feelings. The panel of three judges ruled that Cig’s actions did not constitute a crime.
The diminutive, staunchly pro-secular former academic, who was born in 1914 — the waning years of the Ottoman Empire and the start of World War I — was the latest person to go on trial in Turkey for expressing her views, despite intense European Union pressure on the country to expand freedom of expression.
She joins a long list of writers, journalists and academics who have been prosecuted, including this year’s Nobel prize-winner, Orhan Pamuk, and novelist Elif Shafak, although Cig was prosecuted on different charges to the other two authors.
Charges of insulting Turkishness against Pamuk were dropped over a technicality earlier this year, and Shafak was acquitted.
Those two were tried under Turkey’s now infamous Article 301, which sets out punishment for insulting the Turkish Republic, its officials or “Turkishness.” Cig was accused of inciting hatred by insulting people based on their religion.
Good thing we don’t ever have to worry about the good old United States ever passing laws like these. Right? Uh…Right?
This is European values. Try writing a book that the Holocaust never happened, or now in France that the Armenian genocide didn’t happen.
The mullahs in Turkey are as crazy and have about as much power as our Falwells etc.Turkey is as ready as any nation in Eastern Europe to join the union.We have our own political religous court battles to be ashamed of.What kind of uproar would occur if an Iranian mullah suggested the assasination of Mr. Bush? War?
What a daft comment from AB CD!
The Holocaust denial issue is one specific to Germany and Austria precisely because of their past history. The issue of the Armenian genocide is specific to Turkey, not France, and each of these issues (and related ones) are far more complex than airily dismissing them as “European values” warrants.
It’s possibly true that Europe is more predisposed to criminalising expressions of thought than, in general, is the US but consider the recent attempts to make burning the US flag a criminal offence and the outrage so many in the US express when they see that object desecrtated. That (and this nonsense of singing some sort of national hymn in school in the morning, hand clamped on left breast) seems ludicrous to most Europeans but it’s another side of essentially the same coin.
Turkey is something of a special case and the struggle between a genuinely secular approach (as specified by its modern founder, Ataturk in 1923) and those taking either an Islamic or else a traditionally conservative view is on-going with far too many writers and artists hauled up in court. Fortunately most of these prosecutions fail and partly this is because of the strong desire of many in Turkey to join the EU where, as it happens, and contrary to AB CD’s sweeping generalisation, such prosecution of people expressing culturally uncomfortable ideas is not acceptable.
More widely throughout Europe there is strong legislative support for ensuring individual and general human rights, including expressing particular views while seeking to balance what happens when provocative views are expressed. This is enacted differently in different countries and can indeed go over the top – as in the UK, for instance, with its recent extensions of the ridiculous blasphemy laws – but the underlying aims are worthwhile and the practical effects in many areas have been positive.
#3 Well said sir, well said.
“charges of insulting religious feelings”
What a bunch of babies. True faith is believing in what you want regardless of what others say. That they can so easily get shaken from their belief is their own issue.
#3, I agree with #4, well said.
#3, Another thought that came to mind.
Ataturk insisted on a secular society. So did the founders of the United States of America. We also have court rulings banning religious activities intruding into public life. Too often the religious nut cases have tried to impose their religious values on all Americans. Lets leave the religion out of public life.
On the Armenian genocide, Turkey’s law says you shouldn’t say the genocide happened. France’s is the opposite, though it may just be a proposal at this point. So far you’ve mentioned France, Germany, Austria, and England. That covers a wide swath of Europe if you ask me. You say such prosecution of people expressing culturally uncomfortable ideas is not acceptable, but that’s exactly what’s happening, and your support of it shows indeed that it is acceptable.
The flag burning issue is now going on in Britain. France indeed has stated that to deny the Armeanian Genocide is against the criminal code. In Turkey it’s just the opposite. Remember France voted no on the new E.U. constitution to block Turkey from getting in.
The case was brought by a fundlementalist Muslim lawyer, under a law passed by the present ruling party, allowing for charges to brought by any citizen against anyone writing, speaking anything that insults, or damages Islam. So far, the Courts in Turkey have stood up to the goverment and has either thrown out all of these cases or allowed a trial to go foreward, but decided in the artists, or writers or movie producers favor.
The present goverment is Conservative and has been trying to overturn some of Turkeys key laws against a religious goverment. So far, no real luck, mainly because of the Courts and the Army. The Army is very secular, and has stepped in, in the past to stop Conservative goverments from changing Turkeys secular Constitution.
The Headscarf issue is a hot one in Turkey right now. The fundies and the goverment want the constitution changed to require it.
And Murdock……I have lived in Europe enough to know, that yes, your right, they have a completely different view on Free Speech than we do. We are so much more freer than most Europeans, including Britain.
I don’t plan to get involved in a long discussion on the comparative freedom of expression in the US as against Europe, partly lack of time but also because the main point is really the tensions within Turkey and the fact that there is this continuing pressure to seek to prosecute those who in the minds of some are bringing Turkey’s nationhood or traditions or culture or dominant religion into disrepute as against the views of many others – including the archaeologist cited and the likes of Nobel Laureate Orham Pamuk. But let’s touch on a couple of comments.
As #7 says, both the US and Turkey have the separation of religion and the state enshrined in their constitutions. This is for very good reasons identified by both Ataturk and Madison et al to the effect that religion is, and should be, essentially a private issue and that it’s inappropriate and dangerous to have government business managed by reference to religious views. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Islam, Christianity or whatever, the principle is vitally important.
I gave the example of flag burning, intentionally choosing what is more of a national focus than a religious one (and of course hostility to such acts isn’t restricted to the US) but there’s any number of instances of religious interference in more properly secular matters in the US just as there is in Turkey. My aim isn’t to knock the US for this but really to point out that the tension and opposition is essentially between religiosity (which often incorporates traditional cultural and national attitudes) and a properly liberal approach. (And, incidentally, let’s not get too excited about “liberal” – I’m using it in the technical sense encompassing broadly Lockean liberal-democratic, secular values.)
This tension exists all over the world in various balances, even in places like Iran, where there were and remain plenty of liberals. It exists widely in the US (exacerbated by the very strong religiosity riding on the back of widespread religious belief) and in varying degrees in Europe as a whole. So, Joshua (and it’s “Murdoch“, incidentally) I dispute that you’re freer in the US than in Europe as regards free speech. You’re different but, exactly as with different parts of Europe, you’re also internally different in Seattle or San Francisco than in Baton Rouge or Little Rock, different in NYC, different again in Great Falls or Casper, and so on.
Do you really think that it’s freedom of speech to insist that assertions of creationist thought take equal educational weight with scientific theories (themselves essentially and necessarily still tentative) based on reproducable studies observable phenomena? Libel laws in the UK are certainly draconian compared with many other places and I fully accept that our present UK government seems hell-bent on curtailing many very important freedoms but those and similar instances (including that of France, like Turkey, prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols whether the niqab [the veil with only an eye slit] or the cross in public buildings and locations) aren’t indicators of European illiberality but need to be seen in context, as I suggested earlier.
And in response to #8, I most certainly do not say it’s acceptable that the expression of uncomfortable, or offensive, ideas be banned. I remarked on the absurdity of extending the blasphemy laws in the UK. And I don’t believe, as you appear to do, that overall it is happening in Europe although undoubtedly there is pressure there are elsewhere from interested lobbyists and there is some capitulation.
In the end it’s not a simple black and white issue; free speech isn’t an absolute and what’s happening in Europe – perhaps more so than in the US – is attempting to balance competing rights. That’s what democracy, properly understood, is about. And the important point there, it seems to me, is that those of a liberal, secular persuasion (and that will include very many conservatives and both believers and atheists) need to do everything in their power to insist that the default position must be in favour of free speech and free expression and if sometimes it has to be restricted then a very, very good case needs to be made.