Blind Turk Says He's Going to Jail for Sake of Freedom

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.etext.org>
Subject: Blind Turk Says He's Going To Jail For Sake Of Freedom

_________________________________________________________________
 
     BLIND TURK SAYS HE'S GOING TO JAIL FOR SAKE OF FREEDOM
_________________________________________________________________
 
     The New York Times
     September 26, 1997
 
     By STEPHEN KINZER
 
     ISTANBUL, Turkey -- A blind lawyer has sat in his apartment
for the last few days, waiting for the police to take him to jail
so he can begin serving a 23-year sentence after making a speech
deemed favorable to separatism.
   
     "There is nothing further I can do," the lawyer, Esber
Yagmurdereli, said in an interview in his apartment in Ankara the
other day, soon after a court turned down his final appeal. "I
have told my friends that I will not go into hiding or try to
leave the country. I'm ready to go to jail and wait for a
political decision, for political change, for constitutional
change that will allow me to be freed."
     
     Yagmurdereli's imprisonment is likely to focus further
attention on human rights problems that have kept Turkey out of
the European Union and the informal club of Western democracies
for decades.
     
     In willingly facing his sentence, Yagmurdereli is part of
another Turkish tradition, the determination of some
intellectuals to sacrifice their freedom in an effort to draw
attention to what they consider their country's lack of full
democracy.
     
     "I am not a masochist," he said. "I see this as a patriotic
duty, a way of trying to enlighten my fellow citizens."
     
     The court decision upholding Yagmurdereli's sentence was one
of three that have made headlines in recent days. In the two
other cases, accused gunmen who were charged with membership in
state-sponsored death squads and policemen who were charged with
beating a journalist to death were set free.
     
     The coincidence of these three decisions caused much comment
in political circles and the press, where the existence of the
"deep state," a set of obscure forces that seem to function
beyond the reach of law, has become a major topic of discussion
over the last year.
     
     One leading newspaper reported the three decisions under the
headline "Biggest Crime: To Think." Another published a cartoon
showing the accused gunmen and police officers walking out of a
prison door and Yagmurdereli being ushered in another door. The
caption was, "Deep state protects its own."
     
     This brush with the law is not Yagmurdereli's first. He is
one of a small group of human rights advocates who have
continually challenged Turkey's restrictions on freedom of speech
and press.
     
     Yagmurdereli, 52, who was blinded in an accident when he was
11, holds a law degree and a doctorate in philosophy from one of
Turkey's leading universities. During the 1970s, when Turkey was
consumed by political violence and the military sought to crush
what it viewed as a communist threat, he represented trade unions
and opponents of the government. This marked him as politically
suspicious, and in 1978 he was arrested and convicted of leading
a clandestine revolutionary group.
     
     A report on his trial by the human rights group Amnesty
International said it "failed on a number of counts to conform to
internationally recognized standards governing fair trials." It
said that witnesses against him had withdrawn their charges in
court and that "their statements to the police had been extracted
under torture."
     
     The death sentence passed on Yagmurdereli was later commuted
to life imprisonment, which in Turkey is equivalent to 36 years
in jail. He served nearly 14 years, 7 of them in an isolation
cell.
     
     Only a month after his release in 1991, Yagmurdereli made a
speech asserting that Turkish governments had denied religious
and ethnic groups, specifically the Kurds, rights that are
guaranteed under international law.
     
     "The Kurdish people have revolted for liberty and democracy
for the first time in history and have found their leadership,"
he said. "They have reached the critical stage at which they
reject the oppression and inhuman conditions in which they have
lived for thousands of years."
     
     A court found Yagmurdereli guilty of slandering the Turkish
state and "propagating separatism by supporting and provoking
violence," specifically the guerrilla war being waged by the
Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.
     
     "In this speech, part of the country was referred to as
Kurdistan, and the illegal and inhumane activities of the
terrorist PKK were described as the struggle of the Kurdish
people for independence," the verdict said. "We strongly believe
that in this speech, the above-named person has advocated
separatism and praised illegal activities."
     
     The court sentenced Yagmurdereli to a year in prison,
subtracting two months he had served just after the speech. Under
Turkish law, he must now serve 10 months plus the 22 years that
remained on his previous sentence when he was paroled.
     
     "Because the government outlaws the discussion of ideas it
considers hostile, there is no way to open up new avenues, new
designs for the country's future," Yagmurdereli said. "If you try
to have open debate here, you wind up with a prison sentence.
That is what allows the government to try to solve the Kurdish
problem with violence rather than by political means."
     
     Despite his current tribulations, he believes that political
change is imminent in Turkey, and that as a result he will end up
serving no more than a year or two in prison.
     
     "People are much more aware of the restrictions on their
freedom than they were in the past," he said. "Policies which
limit the practice of politics in this country cannot survive
much longer."
 
(via AFIB)

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