Turkish Publisher Ragip Zarakolu Honored by PEN

Since founding Belge in 1977 with his late wife, Ayse Hur, Zarakolu has defied Turkey’s censorship laws by translating and publish- ing Turkish editions of works by Armenian, Greek, Kurdish and other writers, dealing with such forbidden subjects as the Armenian Genocide and the repression of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. If Zarakolu is convicted of the present charges against him he faces up to 15 years in prison.

In Balakian’s introductory remarks he recalled first meeting Zarakolu in 1998, at

“Ragip was there to receive a prize from the Frankfort Book Fair on behalf of his wife, Ayse Hur, who was in prison in Turkey. We became friends and he would soon be my Turkish publisher, bringing out a beautiful edition of my memoir, Black Dog of Fate, which deals with the Armenian Genocide. Ragip opened up a new world for me — and as my first Turkish friend, he would become a bridge to another side of Turkish society — a more complex and rich Turkey — that many of us had hoped somehow to find. For many of us, who wrote on the Armenian Genocide in particular, had been objects of ridicule from the Turkish nationalists we had encountered.

“When you meet Ragip, you immediately encounter his quiet strength, warmth and gentleness that lets you know that he is at home with himself and his life. His life’s work is an emanation of who he is. He is humble about his work, but he is confident about what his work is and means. He is courageous and he inspires courage.

“He and his late wife Ayse — and now their son Deniz who is also in a Turkish prison at this time for his work as a publisher — have devoted their lives to bringing intellectual freedom and democracy to Turkey. And Ragip’s present wife, Katherine Holle, and children Seref and Zerrin have been sustain- ing forces to this project in the past decade.

“Ragip’s recent arrest is set in a long con-

text of Turkish repression of intellectuals and free expression. Turkey (along with China and Syria) has had consistently one of the worst human rights records over the past decades. And, this year, Reporters Without Borders has noted that the recent arrests of 99 journalists in Turkey is the worst ‘wave of arrests since the military dictatorship.’ Zarakolu was part of that purge.

“Imagine a publisher in Turkey bringing out books year in and year out on the following subjects: the Greek expulsion from Turkey; the tragedy of the Turkish left; tor- ture and capital punishment in Turkey; the status of Turkish prisons; the ‘Kurdish question’; the Armenian Genocide; the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Pontic Greeks and Assyrians; anti-Semitism and the rights of women in Turkey.

“If you think of the hundreds or perhaps thousands of books that come out each year in the US on parallel or equivalent subjects you realize that Ragip Zarakolu’s publishing company is this entire sector of intellectual life for Turkey, and you get a sense of what he means to his nation.

“And yet, he has been rewarded by his government with endless trials, harassment, persecution and imprisonment. His late wife, Ayse, was in prison or on trial more than 30

times. His publishing company was bombed, destroyed by Turkish nationalists in 1996. At the moment Ragip is out on bail but he will have to stand trial for being accused of that endless false pretext called ‘terrorism’‘ for supporting and publishing works on Kurdish rights. And through all of this Ragip has proceeded with calm, with patience, with perseverance, with grace and dignity, with great courage and with a love of what he does. Ragip has said, ‘I’m not an activist, I’m just a publisher.’

“He is more than a publisher; he is a force for democracy, intellectual freedom and the very foundation of human society in Turkey over the past 40 years — and he is an embodiment of these realties for all societies, because intellectual freedom is something that can never be taken for granted.”

PEN American Center is the largest of the 144 centers of PEN International, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. The Freedom to Write Program of PEN American Center works to protect the freedom of the written word wherever it is imperiled. It defends writers and journalists from all over the world who are imprisoned, threatened, persecuted or attacked in the course of carrying out their profession.