Turkey Urged to Lift Press Restrictions as Editor Faces a Century in Jail

Fatma Yazici, the 33-year-old editor of an opposition newsmagazine, has so many prosecutions ahead of her that, even after three acquittals, she could still be sent to jail for more than a century.

She is one reason why the International Press Institute--which styles itself a human rights organization--challenged Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal to his face to declare an amnesty for jailed journalists and lift restrictive press laws.

Yazici’s publication, Towards 2000, is an Istanbul-based weekly that tackles issues other Turkish publications fear to broach. Since its birth in January, 1987, its issues have been confiscated four times and it has attracted 18 prosecutions.

Thus far, Yazici has been sentenced to more than three years in jail on a variety of charges. She has been found innocent in three other cases, and six more are nearing trial.

Her latest notice of prosecution--ironically delivered as the IPI assembly was still in session--followed a story about a report on Turkey by a Helsinki human rights group.

The report, Destroying Ethnic Identity--The Kurds of Turkey, is freely available to Turks in English. But the Istanbul prosecutor charged Yazici under Article 142 of the penal code, which makes it a crime to “weaken national sentiment” and to quote from an illegally published work.

The charge could bring Yazici another seven to 15 years in jail.

Other Stories Bring Charges

Six other stories about Kurds, ranging from a report on discussions in West Germany’s Parliament to another implying that Turkish founding father Kemal Ataturk had favored some degree of Kurdish autonomy, led to court proceedings.

Obviously, the situation of Turkey’s estimated 8 million Kurds is a delicate subject.

Constitutionally, the country insists it has no ethnic minority. Only now is the topic being aired in news media under the label “separatism,” political affairs writer Mehmet Ali Birand told the IPI assembly.

Yazici’s magazine took a blunter approach, and not only to the Kurdish situation.

Her magazine’s cover story about whether Ataturk’s guiding principles were reflected in the 1980 military coup, when current President Kenan Evren was military chief of staff, led to a 16-month sentence for showing disrespect to the president.

An earlier story about luxury homes owned by the president’s daughters brought a similar sentence on a similar charge.

The magazine’s investigation into the illicit sale of Ataturk archives now has Yazici--not the alleged illicit dealers--on trial for theft and preparing false papers. The magazine purchased alleged archive material using a check it intentionally bounced.

Prime Minister Ozal himself ordered two cases opened against the magazine after a leaked report, allegedly from the National Intelligence Organization, about the peccadilloes of a former general and another report alleging cheap gold sales to Ozal.

Despite her plight, Yazici is defiant.

“When I land in jail, someone else will take over,” Yazici says. “If they close us down, we’ll publish something else. We’re determined to continue investigative journalism.”

She says she is convinced powerful forces are trying to close the magazine through legal harassment and enough seizures to make publication uneconomic.

“I think they go over each issue to see what they can prosecute us for next,” she said.

Motives Questioned

Some observers regard her magazine’s motives as politically suspect in a country where communism is illegal. Known communist sympathizers are prominent among its writers.

Others see Towards 2000 as an outlet for officially sponsored leaks of sensitive information, part of a struggle for political influence among parts of the state apparatus.

“In Turkey many things are known by many people, but they don’t write them,” said Yazici, who expects to be in jail until she is 70.

“There’s self-censorship. They’re afraid of conflict with the authorities. They have no love for truth. But if you go round and about, you almost bump into the news--and then you write it.”

Despite the magazine’s troubles, IPI members from 43 countries found encouraging signs of free speech in Turkey. Respected Turkish journalists spoke openly from the assembly platform about the system’s pressures. Dogu Perincek, Towards 2000 editor in chief, made scathing comments in the English-language Turkish Daily News about 25 editors in jail for “press crimes.”

Ozal sat impassively as IPI’s outgoing chairman, Juan Luis Cebrian of Spain, told him from the rostrum that “it is impossible for a truly free media not to express an opinion on such issues” as the Kurdish situation.

But free speech seems to be making little difference for Yazici. There are no visible government moves to reform the penal code under which she is being prosecuted. An amnesty for journalists held on “press crimes” demanded by the IPI executive has produced no official response.

However, a proposed press law was shelved after Turkish journalists protested it would effectively censor the news. State-controlled radio and television, currently seen as government mouthpieces, are recruiting journalists of agreed impartiality for senior positions.