Chomsky Helps Free Speech Case

Chicago Tribune,
February 14, 2002, p. A12

Istanbul — With Noam Chomsky, the American provocateur of the intellectual left, sitting in the courtroom yesterday, Turkish prosecutors abandoned their case against an Istanbul publisher who printed a book in which Chomsky accuses Turkey of suppressing its Kurdish minority.

Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at MIT, had come to Turkey to help 22-year-old Fatih Tas, of Aram Publishing House, fight charges of threatening the unity of the Turkish state.

Prosecutors denied Chomsky's request to be added as a defendant in the case. But Tas credited Chomsky's presence with tilting the proceedings in his favor.

The case was the latest high-profile test of Turkey's laws on freedom of speech, which the political elite have used repeatedly to silence critical views on sensitive issues, from the Kurdish question to Islamic fundamentalism.

Whether the acquittal would mark a turning point in Turkey's restrictions on free speech remained uncertain. Some analysts saw it as a convenient response to the circus-like atmosphere created by the arrival of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology figure, best known for his outspoken political views.

The charges against Tas were dismissed after the prosecution reversed itself and said the book, "American Interventionism," did not constitute "propaganda against the indivisible unity of the Turkish state."

Tas's book includes a translation of a Chomsky lecture in which he said the Turkish government had "launched a major war in the southeast against the Kurdish population" and described the conflict as "one of the most severe human rights atrocities of the 1990s."

"The prosecutor clearly made the right decision," Chomsky said. "I hope that it will be a step toward establishing the freedom of speech in Turkey that we all want to see."

Tas, who has six other cases pending against him, thanked Chomsky for his support.