Conscience is a distinctive moral quality of mankind. The
conscientious, the honest, the righteous or whatever you may choose to call them
represent the true pride and honour of a country, but criminals wielding an axe
never can! A writer in Azerbaijan who should have been the pride of his country
is presently in mortal danger, and the threat emanates from the President of
the country, who is a post-Soviet autocrat. The title of “People’s Writer” of
the Republic of Azerbaijan and the associated state award have been rescinded,
his author’s pension has been cancelled, and his wife and son have been fired
from their jobs.This writer is Ekrem Eylisli, an author, scriptwriter and
dramatist who adopted the great Soviet writer Maxim Gorky’s philosophy of the fraternity
of peoples at Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, dedicated to that
great man.
He is presently 75
years old, a prolific writer published in many magazines and newspapers. He was
elected to the parliament in 2005. His literary life had begun in 1959 with
poetry, and continued with stories, plays, scripts and novels. He has also
translated many works by humanist writers such as Gabriel G. Marquez, Turgenev
and Chinghiz Aitmatov into the Azeri language. His plays have been performed in
many former Soviet cities including Yerevan.
Lynch mobs are now mobilized in front of his
house, very much like we had once witnessed in Maras and Sivas. An outstanding
slogan is « Come and bring your axe! », calling on the Azeri officer
Ramil Sahiboglu Seferov who decapitated an Armenian officer called Gurgen Margaryan
with an axe in his sleep in 2004, twenty days before they were to return
home (*). They were co-trainees in the
NATO-sponsored « Partnership for Peace » program in Budapest.
Melahet Ibrahimqizi –an Azeri parliamentarian who had been a
part of the delegation flown in to Ankara to talk with parliamentary chairman Köksal
Toptan (**), CHP leader
Deniz Baykal, MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, as well as various AKP functionaries,
and eventually to block the move altogether when a protocol was signed in 2009 between
Armenia and Turkey to normalize relations and open the border– now tries to
extend the lynch campaign to Turkey as well, saying in an aggressive speech
delivered in the Azeri parliament that Eylisli insults not only Azerbaijanis,
but the Turkish nation as a whole. Demands were even made in that parliamentary
session that the writer be subjected to a DNA test and that he should be deprived
of citizenship.
The reason for all this is the publication of Eylisli’s
latest novella "Stone Dreams" in the Russian literary magazine Druzhba
Narodov (Fraternity of Peoples). The novella has not even been published in
Azeri yet. An enraged mob gathered in front of Eynisli’s home in the capital
Baku, shouting “Shame on you, traitor!”, and burning his books, and his
portraits with a cross printed on his forehead.
The novella tells the story of two Azeri men who tried to
protect their Armenian neighbours from ethnic violence. It also mentions
pogroms against Armenians in Sumguit and Baku cities in a vein of conscientous criticism.
The novella was actually finished in 2007, but could only be published 5 years
later in Russian.
It is interesting to note that an Armenian writer also dealt
with the Armenian-Azeri conflict in a conscientious tone –at about the same
time— and was awarded a prize in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Writers Union
where he was a member reacted to his acceptance of an Azerbaijani award (though
not to his writing of the story itself), whereupon the writer resigned from the
Union in protest. However, he never became the target of a hate campaign as is
the case in Baku now.
Researcher Sarkis Hatspanian says that the Armenian
writer Levon Cavakhyan wrote the story “Kirve” (Godfather) in 2008, saying
“Azeris are not my enemy” (***). Azeri writer Ekrem Eynisli –who had said
“Armenians are not my enemy” at about the same time—now faces a lynch campaign
5 years later for having uttered the same sentence.
Though invited by Western countries and
Russia, Ekrem Eynisli takes a proud stance, saying “This is my homeland and I
will not leave it”.
I call upon international public opinion as
well as the democratic public in Turkey and Azerbaijan to to solidarize
actively with Ekrem Eynisli in order to avert a new murder similar to that
committed against Hrant Dink.
Ragip Zarakolu (****)
(*) Seferov was
condemned to life imprisonment in Hungary, but Azerbaijan’s president Aliev had
him immediately released by presidential pardon on August 31, 2012, when he was
extradited to Azerbaijan.
(**) Köksal Toptan was to exercise his powers as Chairman of
the Turkish Parliament in 2009 in impounding and returning –at the behest of
CHP’s MP Sükrü Elekdag—books sent to members of parliament by the Gomidas Institute,
thereby violating the parliamentarians’ freedom to communicate.
(***)
facebook.com/notes/sarkis-hatspanian/kirve/489684637733351
(****) Founding Member of Human Rights
Association and of Social History Foundation; member of PEN Turkey and of the
Writers Union of Turkey; member of Turkish Publishers Association and of the
International Committee for the Freedom to Publish; nobel Peace Prize Nominee by
Swedish Parliament members and by the French Section of GIT [the
International Work Group (GIT) ‘Academic Liberty and Freedom of Research [in
Turkey]’ (www.gitfrance.fr and www.gitinitiative . com).” ]
rzarakolu@aol.com
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