Besikci has been sentenced to more than 100 years’ imprisonment and the corresponding one million Turkish Lira fines for their books. Many of his books are banned in Turkey.
For many years, Ismail Besikci the only non-Kurdish person in Turkey to speak loudly and clearly in defence of Kurdish rights. Besikci has become a powerful and important symbol for the Kurds and the human rights movement in Turkey.
Author and sociologist Ismail Besikci sentenced March 4, 2011 in Istanbul to 1 year and 3 months imprisonment. Turkey’s terror law is a threat to human rights activists, the press and academics.
Ismail Besikci was born in 1939 in Iskilip, Turkey. He studied at the Political Sciences of Ankara University, and graduated in 1962. He worked as an assistant professor at Ataturk University in Erzurum. He wrote his first anthropological study of the last nomadic Kurdish tribes, Alikans.
His second meeting with the Kurds was during his military service when he served in Bitlis and Hakkari province, where he first saw the nomadic tribe Alikans Bitlis pass as they migrate from winter to summer pastures and back.
His book on the Kurdish society, "the Order of the Eastern Anatolia" was first published in 1969. The university took disciplinary action against him which would lead to a trial after the 1971 coup. He was arrested and put on trial for anti-national propaganda in which he was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for "crimes against the indivisibility of the Turkish nation".
Besikci did not serve his full 13 years and received amnesty at the end of 1974. He was not allowed to work in academic work again, and he pursued his research as an independent researcher, in economically precarious circumstances.
Recently, he was prosecuted and imprisoned in 1993 for one of his earlier books he had written in 1977: The Scientific Method 1 – Implementation of Turkey and assimilation of the Kurds.
Besikci has been sentenced to more than 100 years’ imprisonment and the corresponding one million Turkish Lira fines for their books. Many of his books are banned in Turkey.
For many years, Ismail Besikci the only non-Kurdish person in Turkey to speak loudly and clearly in defence of Kurdish rights. Besikci has become a powerful and important symbol for the Kurds and the human rights movement in Turkey.
Author and sociologist Ismail Besikci sentenced March 4, 2011 in Istanbul to 1 year and 3 months imprisonment. Turkey’s terror law is a threat to human rights activists, the press and academics.
The decision has been made on the case where Ismail Besikçi and Lawyer Zeycan Balci Simsek stood trial due to an essay on Kurdish problem published on the journal “Law and Society in our age”.
Besikçi and Lawyer Zeycan Balci, owner of the journal “Law and Society in our age” that is published within the body of Contemporary Lawyers Association, appeared during the third trial of the case at 11th High Criminal Court in Besiktas.
Declaring the decision, the court board sentenced Besikçi to 1 year 6 months imprisonment which was reduced to 1 year 3 months, while Lawyer Simsek was imposed a pecuniary penalty of 16 thousand 660 liras.
Human rights organizations, the EU and Turkey must take the issue seriously:
– The official ideology in Turkey is an obstacle to freedom of thought. The Constitution of Turkey to protect the nationalist ideology in Turkey. The constitution must be reformed
– The trial of Besikci had no proof, and therefore can not be accepted
– Stop discriminating against research on the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Stop trials nationalist decisions on Kurdish politicians and academics!
Dialogue is the only way to peace.
The human rights orgnanization:
Kurdocide Watch-CHAK
Central Board
07.03.2011
