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Turkey Gradually Moving Towards Freedom Of Speech
Turkey is one of the countries that are trying desperately to join the EU. Of course, if Turkey does not want to be left behind (economically), it has to become a member of the European Union.
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Best selling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak was accused of breaking article 301 of Turkey’s penal code: which envisages up to three years in jail for “denigrating Turkish national identity”.”. Today a court acquitted her.
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10 Responses to “Turkey Gradually Moving Towards Freedom Of Speech”
Congratulations to the EU for holding Turkey’s feet to the fire on this issue. The really odd thing about this was how trivial the passages in her book were.
yes and even more so considering that it was… a novel. With fictional characters… The court seemed to have thought the same about that.
EU: yes I am quite sure that the EU had something to do with it actually. Without international pressure, the ruling, perhaps could have been different. Yet another reason why it is important for the EU to allow Turkey to join if it changes its laws regarding, among other things, the freedom of speech.
Michael what do people think about turkey joing the EU in your area? I ask because in Spain there is overwhelming opposition, and I’ve spoken to people from other countries, like France and Germany, that say the same thing about THEIR countries. The general feeling I get is that the EU governments are pushing Turkey to join against thw wishes of actual Europeans. Then there is the “slight” detail that Turkey has only a small portion of it’s country actually in Europe, and that they’ve traditionally been our enemies. So if actual location in the world is not a factor I say we ask Australia to join first. They sure have a lot more in common with most EU citizens than a majority of Turks.
Hope you’re still awake to read this, I’m going to bed but I hope to read your thoughts in the morning
Oh, man, it must be past my bedtime! It took me several attempts to corectly construe the headline of this post. Sorry, Michael. The story sounds interesting, but it’ll have to wait for tomorrow; my brain simply can’t be trusted to process language tonight.
Isidora: ha, perhaps my headline is kind of confusing…;)
Lynx: no, I was not awake anymore. As you know, it is 2 or 3 hours later here in the Netherlands than it is in Spain. In other words, if you’re going to bed, chances are that I am well asleep myself
The general view is the same throughout Europe: most people are not exactly supportive of the idea of letting Turkey join. That being said, we have, it is that simple, a representative democracy and most politicians agree with me about this matter.
Turkey has a growing problem with the Secularists, primarily the military, and the Islamists struggling for power. This country could become unstable and a huge problem for the EU and the US if the military sees the need to seize power from an Islamist dominated government. Ataturk admonition to remain a secular state still resonates with a large part of the population, but the Islamists are gaining influence with every election and their view of what government should be are radically different than the secular view. This would be a good subject for Elrod to comment on.
I finally got it read. (I don’t have a lot of time for the internet in the morning.)
Only slightly. I have seen far worse headlines that got past professional editors who were (presumably) native speakers. One of these was during the Danish cartoon uproar. One headline read “Bush Urges End to Cartoon Violence.” (For those of you who aren’t native speakers, the phrase “cartoon violence” is used for the sort of stuff you see in Bugs Bunny and company. The headline should have read: “violence over cartoons.”)
Michael, the only thing that would have disambiguated the meaning of “Turkey” in your headline was to have totally rewritten the headline to use the phrase “in Turkey.” The only reason that it was even ambiguous to begin with was that it was at the beginning of a sentence and in a headline – where it would have been capitalized anyway. Since the phrasing you used is by far the most straightorward, I probably would have worded the headline exactly the way you did, without even noticing that it could be ambigious.
Of course, I seem to have this particular talent for accidentally noticing ambiguities that are barely there (and unintentional) while frequently missing very intentional and obvious ambiguities that were intended as jokes (or not noticing them until minutes or hours later.) Kind of embarassing at times.
Darn you obsessed-with-language people!
just kidding of course
I wonder what turkey would have to say about Thanksgiving though…
Darn you obsessed-with-language people!
Hey, now! I’ve actually got an excuse, in the form of a Bachelor of Science in Linguistics from Indiana University, Bloomington. But, yeah, I was pretty pedantic. The absolute worst course I took in college was Semantics (largely because of the professor, who was absolutely brilliant, but not an especially good match for undergraduate students), but I absolutely love semantics on the practical level.
I wonder what turkey would have to say about Thanksgiving though…
And Christmas. It’s also the traditional Christmas meat in large parts of the country. I think they tend to use ham a lot in the South, but I’m not certain, since I’m not from the South.
You know “turkey” also means “fool, idiot, jerk, ass, etc.”? If not, it’s worth knowing. After failing to make sense of the headline using “turkey” as “bird”, I switched to “idiot.” Failing to make sense of that, I tried reading the article. Then I laughed at myself.
LOL no I was not aware of that.
That must have been an exhausting excercise for you