• by IPS Correspondents (istanbul)
• Tuesday, November 08, 1994
• Inter Press Service

ISTANBUL, Nov 08 (IPS) - Turkey's 13th book fair opened this week (Nov 11) - minus an increasing number of books that have been banned by the government.

Many more books have fallen foul of the censor than figured on the 1993 banned, including 'Kurdish Question' by Prof. Haluk Gerger and 'Insolvency of the Paradigm' by Prof. Fikret Baskaya.

Both authors are now serving terms in prison for their dissident opinions.

Many foreign guests invited to the opening of the four-day fair - which has the theme 'Drama in Turkey' - refused to attend in protest against the official persecution of intellectuals in Turkey, organizers said.

Foreign literary guests who were due to show up included Richard McKane and Christopher Hope of England; Dietrich Gronau of Germany, author of a book on Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk.

"We made efforts to invite other reputable authors but when they learned about the incredible crackdown on dissident authors, many refused to participate," said Deniz Kavukcuoglu, manager of the fair's organising company TUYAP.

One domestic publishing house, Yurt Kitap, also boycotted the fair which drew exhibits from 237 Turkish publishing companies. Yurt Kitap is the publisher of dissident sociologist Ismail Besikci, among others.

"The book fair is in fact an enemy of literature," Unsal Ozturk, owner of Yurt Kitap said angrily. "They (the organizers) subserviently obey the orders from police to exclude banned books from the fair... And it is ridiculous for those writers who appear in the fair to accept honorary awards in a country where there exists no freedom of expression."

Out of a total of 80 books published by Yurt Kitap, 37 are already banned in Turkey.

Most of the censored books were written by author and sociologist Ismail Besikci, who faces 83 separate charges of "separatism".

Already, he has been sentenced 130 years imprisonment for infringing anti-terrorism laws in 25 cases and fined 500,000 dollars. The other 58 cases continue, threatening Besikci with additional 100 years.

Another case that stands out is that of Gunay Aslan, who was condemned to four years imprisonment and fined 8,000 dollars for his two books, one is 'Mourning History/33 Bullets' which won the Yunus Nadi literary award. Aslan is still in prison. (MORE)

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© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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