Latife Tekin: Karabük Mayor Files Complaint, PEN Supports

Karabük Mayor Hüseyin Erer of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and many municipality workers are getting ready to file a criminal complaint against the famous writer Latife Tekin for insulting the people of Karabük, an industrial town in western Black Sea region, and the Turkish government during her speech at Karabük festival.

Mayor’s lawyer Taner Tan told Bianet that although they had not filed the complaint yet, they were getting ready for it. He thinks that those who will file the complaint may be close to twenty people, among whom, it is told, will be the mayor and four municipality workers. 

Some sentences from Tekin’s speech are as follows: “When I was in Karabük it was a different place. Now I see that many of the women are covered…There is wild urbanization here, a kind of urbanization that disfigures the environment…They came from below and took the power in the cities. I do not like these men…Media controls everything. The people, the poor people are unable to speak, because every time they try they get a beating.”

When her speech was cut by the mayor, Takin said, “I will speak, have me arrested. I am against Nuclear Power Plants and I have the right to say this. I am creating a scene here. You have me arrested. You do not have courage to say these things. Don’t you do politics?”. It is claimed that she used the term “despicable men”.

PEN: Shutting her up reflects the totalitarian mentality

International Association of Writers PEN Turkish Center Committee For Women Writers, which made an announcement on July 2 to support Tekin, said that the mayor’s shutting up of Latife Tekin by violent means was a perfect example of the totalitarian mentality. The committee asked the public not to forget this incident and show its reaction.

The head of the Contemporary Journalists Association (ÇGD) Ahmet Abakay had said in his previous statement about the incident that the Prime Minister and the top administration of the Justice and Development Party should be first to hold this aggressive mayor responsible for his act. (EÖ/NZ/TB)