A lawsuit filed against author Nedim Gürsel on charges of insulting religious values in his novel “Allah'ın Kızları” (Daughters of God) and anger among religious circles over the “blasphemous” book have sparked a fresh debate on freedom of speech in EU-aspirant Turkey.
Gürsel faces between one and three years in prison under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) for denigrating the religious values of a part of the population with his book, which has sold over 30,000 copies in Turkey.
The controversial name of the book, published in March 2008 by Doğan Publishing, refers to three pagan deities, Lat, Uzza and Manat, which were worshipped in the pre-Islamic period on the Arabian Peninsula as the daughters of God. The book recounts the advent of Islam in the sixth century.
The launch of a case over Gürsel's book on charges of insulting religious values is worrisome, said Haluk Şahin, a journalist and a professor at İstanbul Bilgi University. He argued that novelists should be able to write their books freely benefiting from the means provided to them by the arts and that literary works should not be taken to court unless they incite hatred and violence.
He also criticized the Religious Affairs Directorate for preparing a report about the book claiming that it included obvious insults against Islamic values. He stressed that literary criticism was not the job of this institution.
Earlier this year Gürsel sent a letter to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggesting that he read the book and complaining that the case launched against him for insulting religious values was unfair. “Our country, which is working for full EU membership, will lose its reputation in the civilized and democratic world because of this lawsuit,” he said. The novelist also complained about the report by the Religious Affairs Directorate, arguing that the report's authors distorted the words of his book and did not even actually read it while preparing their report. Yavuz Baydar, a journalist with Sunday's Zaman and the Sabah daily, complained that Turkey has been wasting time, energy and money on such cases.
In the past similar cases have been filed against novelists such as Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's only Nobel Prize-winning author, and Elif Şafak under another disputed article of the TCK, Article 301, which criminalizes “insulting the Turkish nation.”
Criticizing the formulation of Article 216, Baydar said this article was being misused and misinterpreted in Turkey and that people who should be prosecuted for engaging in racism, committing hate crimes and engaging in hate speech were evading punishment under this article. He suggested that the law be re-formulated in order to stop such misinterpretations and cases like the one against Gürsel.
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