Professor Attila Yayla found guilty of insulting Kemal Ataturk
Western Voices
A Turkish professor named Attila Yayla has been given a 15 month suspended prison sentence for “http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=39 of some official historical claims is illegal and subject to fines and imprisonment.
In academic discussions, Professor Yayla allegedly said that Ataturk’s republic, which replaced the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, was not as “progressive” as claimed by the government. Ataturk “thought” is the official ideology of Turkey, and one to which all political organizations must conform. Busts and portraits of Ataturk are present in all public venues and in many homes. Yayla was also condemned for saying that these displays will seem odd to Europeans if Turkey’s dream of joining the European Union is ever achieved.
Turkey has been attacked for restricting freedom of speech, and is planning to debate its infamous Article 301, which bans “insulting Turkishness.” Dozens have been persecuted by Article 301, most infamously the Nobel prize winning novelist Orhan http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2896. Article 301 is only part of a vast legal arsenal used to stifle free inquiry in Turkey.”Many foreign observers concentrate on Article 301, but there are other laws and articles in different laws, which have the potential to restrict freedom of expression, as it is in my case,” Yayla told the BBC.
Interestingly, the European Union has been demanding changes in Turkish speech law, yet itself bans other forms of speech and jails academics and researchers, often for questioning aspects of Second World War history or for questioning European immigration policy. Bizarrely, while in Turkey it is illegal to say that the Turks carried out the Armenian genocide, in France it is illegal to claim the Turks did NOT.
While Europe feels qualified to preach about “freedom” to the Turks, the Europeans share a similar trait with Ankara: the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2827.
By Western standards Ataturk’s modernizing policies were brutal, but they were effective. Ataturk was anxious to break the Turks off from their “imperialist” Ottoman past, a necessity since the loss of their Empire, and to forge a nationalist sense of Turkishness. He banned Ottoman dress, importing millions of old Western suits and hats, which the Turks were forced to don, regardless of size or style. The famous “Turkish fez” is illegal to wear in Turkey, and even tourists who put one on face at the least a grilling from police, as recounted by Jeremy Seal in his fascinating book, A Fez of the Heart. Purdah and other restrictions on women, like the veil, were abolished, part of an effort to cut back the influence of Islam, which also saw the suppression of various Sufi orders and other secret societies. Ataturk also launched a campaign to homogenize the multiethnic Turkish landscape. Those Armenians still alive were clamped down on, various Greek communities ethnically cleansed or killed, and the Indoeuropean speaking Kurds were redesignated “Mountain Turks.” The Kurdish language was banned, as was the Arab script of the Ottomans, in favor of a modified Latin alphabet which does not have many letters needed for Kurdish. It is still illegal to use any letters not officially allowed, and recently Kurds were prosecuted for using illegal letters.
While Ataturk’s methods may have been odious, it could be argued that they were necessary, just as such methods are needed in other Third World locales. More odious is the breast beating from “modern” Europe, which pretends to be morally superior while jailing its own people.