Silenced Voice: Omer Asan

by Siobhan Dowd, with the cooperation of the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN, London

(April 8, 2002) Last February, the Turkish Government adopted Law 4744, which comprised a detailed revision to the statute book. Law 4744 aimed to meet the conditions laid by the European Union for Turkey's membership and was awaited eagerly by human rights monitors, dissidents, and by about one hundred writers and journalists who currently have cases pending against them in the Turkish courts. At last, Turkey seemed set to change. There were hopes that the previous limits on freedom of expression would at least be weakened if not abolished altogether.

Unfortunately, Law 4744 proved disappointing. Although many of the offending statutes were changed (including the infamous Article 8 of the anti-terror legislation which has resulted in many unjust prison terms), they were not dropped and in some cases they were broadened, with more vague language and penalties for infringement made more severe. For instance, the above-mentioned Article 8 used to apply only to "written and oral propaganda" that threatened state security; now it also embraces "visual propaganda." Article 312/2 of the Penal Code, proscribing "incitement to hatred on the basis of class, religion, or race" has admittedly been narrowed, so that this incitement must be "done in a form that could endanger public order;" but it has also been stretched to include a fresh category of "insulting a segment of the population or people's honor."

It is under this last code that the distinguished writer Ömer Asan seems likely to be prosecuted. He is currently in a legal limbo while the state prosecutors consider how the changes in the law modify the case against him; but his acclaimed study of Turkey's Pontus minority (a community in the North East whose culture and language have Hellenic roots) is unlikely to be accorded impunity. All copies of the book have been banned and Asan has already been summoned before a court. There is concern that Law 4722, so far from ameliorating his situation, might aggravate it.

Ömer Asan was born in 1961 in Of, in Trebizond, an area with a strong Islamic tradition, many Greek speakers, and a significant, though aging community of a now rare Pontian language related to Greek. His family was left-leaning: his father, a member of the Turkish Communist Party, was twice imprisoned for his views after the military coups of 1971 and 1981. Asan himself was prosecuted for his leftwing activities during the repressive 1980s. He moved to Istanbul as a young man, and trained as an economist.

In recent years, Asan has worked as a freelance writer. His travel pieces have appeared in several magazines and tourist brochures (a delightful description of Sinop, for example, an ancient city on a Black Sea peninsula, appears on the travel web site www.atamanhotel.com).

In 1994, Asan began to undertake in-depth research into his native village. As he explained in an interview with the International Herald Tribune, "I began to search for my identity because of the fact that the language my ancestors spoke was not Turkish… At school they taught us that we were Turks… but at home, in the village, everyone in the family spoke to each other in the language we called 'Romaiika'… By asking 'Who am I?' I plunged into the unknown. I had to find the answer… I began, in amateur fashion to collect Pontian words. I decided to focus my research on Erenkoy, my village in Of, and to study its living culture as an extant trace of Pontian culture."


Ömer Asan's book about the Pontian culture, Pontos Kültürü, was attacked as a treacherous work by an influential Islamic party in Turkey.

The result was a book in six parts (theoretical framework, history and ethnography, popular literature, folklore, nomenclature, and a glossary). It was first published in Istanbul in 1996 under the title Pontos Kültürü (The Culture of the Pontus), and was reprinted in 1999 in Greece under the title of The Civilisation of the Pontos. It became highly respected among academics as well as sought after by the local population. As Peter Mackridge, Professor Modern Greek at the University of Oxford says, the book, though '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, full of "valuable information" and rich in its use of living sources, especially his interviews with elderly members of the village community.

Please write polite letters appealing for the case against Ömer Asan to be dropped to:

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit
Basbakanlik
Cankaya
Ankara
TURKEY
Fax: +(90-312) 417 0476

Asan's troubles began in December last year. The book had been enjoying a second printing in Turkey, when a TV progam, broadcast live on Saturday nights, began a campaign against it and its author. Zekeriya Beyaz, a professor of theology at Marmara University, was broadcast accusing Asan of being a "traitor," a "friend of Greece," and of supporting those who wanted orthodox Christianity restored to the chiefly Islamic Pontian area. These accusations snowballed, in what seems like an orchestrated assault undertaken by the influential, nationalist MHP party (an Islamic group that runs counter to Turkey's increasingly cosmopolitan atmosphere). Professor Mackridge sees Asan as "a scapegoat" in the MHP's campaign to "undermine efforts to foster a civil society in Turkey." On January 21, 2002, the State Security Court in Istanbul ordered all copies of the book to be withdrawn from sale and issued Asan and his publisher with a summons to a hearing at which these accusations were discussed. The case was then referred to a civil court, but no date has yet been set for a trial. The precise charges against Asan and his publisher have yet to be made known.

Mackridge is among Asan's colleagues who regard these proceedings as completely spurious. However, while the case is pending, Asan's important work is no longer freely available and he himself is living under the shadow of possible imprisonment.