ÖMER ASAN

by Peter Mackridge
(Professor of Modern Greek, University of Oxford)

The Turkish writer Ömer Asan has just had a book of his banned by the Turkish authorities and is being taken to court accused of anti-national activities. I would like to provide some background to the story.

The book

Ömer Asan was born in the province of Trabzon in north-east Turkey in 1961 and has spent most of his life in Istanbul. In 1994 he began to undertake freelance research into the language, culture and history of his native village, whose inhabitants have traditionally been Greek-speakers even though they are devout Muslims. The first fruit of this research was his book Pontos Kültürü (The Culture of the Pontus), published in Istanbul in 1996. Written with no formal education or training in the various disciplines involved (including history, linguistics and anthropology), it is a remarkable account of the history and culture of the region known as Pontus bordering the south-east coast of the Black Sea.

I first met Ömer immediately after he published his book. My own interest in his work focused chiefly on the rich material that he provided on the language of his native village, namely the Pontic dialect of Greek. Pontic dialect was spoken by hundreds of thousands of people, Christians and Muslims, who lived together in the region until the exchange of minorities under the Treaty of Lausanne, signed between Turkey and Greece in 1923, which provided for the transfer of the Orthodox Christian population to Greece. I myself have been interested in the Greek dialect still spoken in the Pontus by its Muslim population today. This is a particularly archaic form of Greek which preserves many features that have disappeared from the Pontic dialect spoken in Greece, which has been very much influenced by standard Modern Greek. For this reason, the Greek of the present-day Pontus can provide valuable information about the history of the Greek language in general. Ömer collected a wealth of linguistic material from elderly members of the village community, and he put this together in the form of a grammar and vocabulary at the end of his book. As well as material on the history of Pontus (and particularly his native region of Of) since ancient times, he included a great deal of anthropological material on his village, covering beliefs, songs, musical instruments, dances, festivals, games and other customs

Recent developments

Trouble began for Ömer about six weeks ago, when his name was mentioned during a programme broadcast live on Saturday nights on Turkey's ATV channel, hosted by Hulki Cevizoglu. This channel has close links with the nationalist MHP Party. On this programme Zekeriya Beyaz, a professor of theology at Istanbul University, referred to Ömer's book and accused him of being a traitor. Beyaz claimed that Ömer Asan was a friend of Greece and was associating with Pontic Greeks who wanted the derelict Byzantine monastery of Panagia Soumela, near Trabzon, to be restored to Orthodox Christians.

On the same programme, on 5 January 2002, Ömer's name was mentioned again, and he tried without success to contact the presenter so that he could respond to the charges against him. On 12 January Professor Beyaz appeared once again on the programme, accusing Ömer of working not only for the Greeks but also for the Kurdish PKK party, which is banned in Turkey. He also falsely accused Ömer of claiming in his book that there are Orthodox Christians living in Pontus. This time Ömer was allowed to defend himself by telephone. On 19 January Ömer appeared in person on Cevizoglu's programme for a discussion with the presenter and three other people, including the Member of Parliament for Ordu, Cemal Enginyurt, who is a member of MHP. During the course of the programme similar accusations were made against Ömer, while Enginyurt made the absurd claim that Ömer's book had been written by Greeks and simply published in Ömer's name. Ömer was asked why he had spent a few months in Greece, and he replied that he had gone to improve his Greek. The presenter, Hulki Cevizoglu, quoted out of context from the preface to Ömer's book by the Greek historian Professor Neoklis Sarris (who was born and bred in Istanbul), in which there is a reference to the landing by Kemal Ataturk at Samsun in Pontus in May 1919 - an event that is taken by Turkish historian Dogan Avcioglu (Milli Kurtulus Tarihi [History of the War of Liberation], 1974) to mark the beginning of the nationalist struggle that led to the founding of the modern Turkish state. Cevizoglu accused Ömer of allowing Sarris to insult the memory of Ataturk. The other three participants in the discussion expressed their agreement with the accusations, and Ömer eventually walked out of the studio.

On 21 January, as a result of the accusations made on these TV programmes, the State Security Court ordered all copies of Ömer's book to be withdrawn from sale. Next day Ömer and his publisher received a summons to appear before the State Security Court in Istanbul to discuss the accusations. The hearing, which took place on 25 January, resulted in the case being referred to a civil court, where Ömer and his publishers are to be tried. No date has yet been fixed for the trial, and the charges against them have not yet been specified.

Having read Ömer's book closely and knowing him well, I can vouch for the fact that all the accusations made against him are false. It has to be said that there are some people in Greece who believe that there are crypto-Christians (Orthodox Christians posing as Muslims) living in the Pontus. However, during my visits to the region over the years, I have never come across such people, and Ömer tells me he has never encountered any of them either. Indeed, in his conversations with me, Ömer has often expressed his impatience with Greeks who approach him with the aim of discovering crypto-Christians in Turkey.

The accusations against Ömer should perhaps be seen against the background of the general campaign by the MHP against the entry of Turkey into the European Union. As part of this campaign, the presenter of the programme, Hulki Cevizoglu, has been broadcasting anti-Europe programmes in the last six weeks. The MHP's campaign seems also to be designed to undermine efforts to foster a civil society in Turkey. Ömer is apparently being used as a scapegoat in this campaign. Despite the MHP, the Turkish government is in the process of adjusting the law in order to enhance democratization through the freedom of the press and speech.

The Writers' Association in Turkey, in which the leading novelist Yashar Kemal plays a leading part and which campaigns against the banning of books in Turkey, has taken up Ömer's case and is organizing a petition calling for charges against Ömer and his publisher to be dropped, and for the ban on his book to be lifted. At the same time, Ömer and his family are taking legal action for slander against the participants in the television discussion.

In the meantime I hope that Ömer's case will be publicized in the British press. His book was researched and written in good faith and at considerable expense to himself in terms of time, money and effort. It is outrageous that he should be persecuted for carrying out this work.
(26 January 2002)

Centre Català del PEN

Comitè d'Escriptors Empresonats
c/ Canuda, 6
08002 Barcelona
Tel: 93 318 32 98
Fax: 93 412 06 66
Envieu mail:
[email protected]