BY John Butler
Linguist and newspaper columnist SEVAN NIŞANYAN has found
himself locked up for 16 years after being subjected to a torrent of lawsuits.
Researcher JOHN BUTLER managed to interview him for the winter 2016 issue of
Index on Censorship magazine. Well-known linguist Sevan Nişanyan will not be eligible
for parole in Turkey until 2024. Locked up in the overcrowded Turkish prison
system, he has found his initial relatively short jail sentence for blasphemy
getting ever longer as he has been subjected to a torrent of “spurious”
lawsuits on minor building infringements related to a mathematics village he
founded.
***
turkey-uncensored-bigTurkey Uncensored is an Index on
Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish
writers, artists and translators.
Linguist and newspaper columnist SEVAN NIŞANYAN has found
himself locked up for 16 years after being subjected to a torrent of lawsuits.
Researcher JOHN BUTLER managed to interview him for the winter 2016 issue of
Index on Censorship magazine
Well-known linguist Sevan Nişanyan will not be eligible
for parole in Turkey until 2024. Locked up in the overcrowded Turkish prison
system, he has found his initial relatively short jail sentence for blasphemy
getting ever longer as he has been subjected to a torrent of “spurious”
lawsuits on minor building infringements related to a mathematics village he
founded.
Nişanyan, who is 60, spoke exclusively to Index on
Censorship. He said he was being kept in appalling conditions. Moved from
prison to prison since being jailed in January 2014, he is now being held in
Menemen Prison, a “massively overcrowded and brain- dead institution”.
He added: “About two thirds of our inmates were recently
moved elsewhere and the remainder pushed ever more tightly into overpopulated
wards to make room for the thousands arrested in the aftermath of the coup
attempt.”
Nişanyan is adamant that his time has not been wasted. He
has been working on the third edition of his Etymological Dictionary of the
Turkish Language, which presently stands at over 1500 pages"
Nişanyan’s ordeal started in 2012 when he wrote a blog
post about free speech arguing for the right to criticise the Prophet Mohammed.
Through notes passed out of his high security prison via his lawyer, Nişanyan
told Index what he believes happened next:
“Mr Erdoğan, the then-prime minister, believes in
micromanaging the country. He was evidently incensed.
“I received a call from his office inquiring whether I
stood by my, erm, ‘bold views’ and letting me know that there was much
commotion ‘up here’ about the essay. The director of religious affairs, the top
Islamic official of the land, emerged from a meeting with Erdoğan to denounce
me as a ‘madman’ and ‘mentally deranged’ for insulting ‘our dearly beloved
prophet’.
“A top dog of the governing party, who later became
justice minister, went on air to assure us that throughout history, no ‘filthy
attempt to besmirch the name of our holy prophet’ has ever been left
unpunished. Groups of so- called ‘concerned citizens’ brought complaints of
blasphemy against me in almost every one of our 81 provinces. Several
indictments were made, and eventually I was convicted for a year and three
months for ‘injuring the religious sensibilities of the public’.”
But what happened afterwards was even more sinister. He
found himself, while in prison, facing eleven lawsuits relating to a village he
was building with the mathematician and philanthropist Ali Nesin. Nişanyan has
been involved for many years in a project to reconstruct in traditional style
the village of Şirince, near Ephesus, on Turkey’s Western seaboard. It is now a
heritage site and popular tourist destination. And nearby, he and Nesin have
built a mathematics village which offers courses to mathematicians from all
over Turkey and operates as a retreat for maths departments in other countries.
They hope it will be the beginnings of a “free” university.
Jailing a non-Muslim, an Armenian at that, for speaking
rather mildly against Islamic sensibilities… would be a first in the history of
the Republic"
It was this project the Turkish authorities decided to
focus on. Nişanyan was given two years for building a one-room cottage in his
garden without the correct licence, then two additional years for the same
cottage. Nine more convictions for infringements of the building code followed,
taking his total term up to 16 years and 7 months.
He, and many others, are convinced that this is a
political case, because jail time for building code infringements is almost
unheard of in Turkey. He believes the authorities have prosecuted him for these
crimes because they do not want his case to cause an international stir.
“Jailing a non-Muslim, an Armenian at that, for speaking
rather mildly against Islamic sensibilities… would be a first in the history of
the Republic,” he told Index. “It might raise eye- brows both here and abroad.”
Despite everything, Nişanyan is adamant that his time has
not been wasted. He has been working on the third edition of his Etymological
Dictionary of the Turkish Language, which presently stands at over 1500 pages.
On entering prison, he signed away most of his property,
including the copyright to his books, to the Nesin Foundation which runs the
mathematics village he is so passionate about. Today the village has added a
school of theatre. A philosophy village is the next project in the works.
“The idea is, of course, to develop all this into a sort
of free and independent university,” he said. “I am sure the young people who
have come together in Şirince for this quirky little utopia will have the
energy and determination to go on in my absence.”
John Butler is a pseudonym
This article is from the winter 2016 issue of Index on
Censorship magazine.
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