Translators on Trial for John Tirmans Book

In this week's hearing of the case at the Istanbul 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance, an additional indictment was added to the case file including charged against Tosun and Yildirim.

If found guilty on the charges of "publicly degrading the armed forces" and "insulting [modern Turkey's founder] Ataturk" through content originally written by Tirman himself, each of the defendants face up to 6.5 years imprisonment.

Both of the translators have rejected the charges in their statements taken during the investigation while Tas's attorney Ozcan Kilic rejected the trial of the publisher on grounds that the author of the work was known and there was no reason to put a publisher on trial just because the author lived abroad.

Aram Publishing House recently launched an online campaign against controversial article 301 used to prosecute the defendants on charges of degrading the armed forces while additional charges against them for insulting Ataturk are based on law number 5812 dubbed the "Ataturk Law" or "Law on Offences Committed Against Ataturk".

The investigation into the Turkish language copy of "Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade" started in November 2005 covering various excerpts in Tirman's work that focuses on criticism of US policy in the Middle East arguing that dollars earned through the arms trade led to support of militarization in the region while holding back essential democratic reforms.

Subject to the Istanbul charges are sections of the book relating to severe human rights violations allegedly committed by security forces in the 1990s inclusive of claims of "white genocide", assimilation, censorship and denial of cultural rights.

This week's hearing was adjourned to November 29 on a request made by the counsel of the translators to study the file and prepare a defense and will come in the wake of another controversial prosecution by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor's office, this time against the Turkish version of Noam Chomsky's "Role of Mass Media: Manufacturing of Consent".

Published again by the Aram Publishing House, the trial of this book is to continue in Istanbul on October 17. Each of the hearings are scheduled to be heard at 0930 in the morning.

Who is John Tirman?

John Tirman who has not directly been charged in the case of the Turkish version of his book and is likely never to be, is the Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies.

A political scientist, Tirman is author, or coauthor and editor, of ten books on international affairs, including The Fallacy of Star Wars (1984), the first important critique of strategic defense, and Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade (1997).

In addition, he has published more than 100 articles in periodicals such as the New York Times, Washington Post, World Policy Journal, The Nation, Wall Street Journal, and International Herald Tribune.

Before joining MIT in 2004, he was program director of the Social Science Research Council. From 1986 to 1999, Tirman was executive director of the Winston Foundation for World Peace, a leading funder of work to prevent nuclear war and promote non-violent resolution of conflict. In 1999-2000, Tirman was Fulbright Senior Scholar in Cyprus and produced an educational Web site on the conflict. (EO/II/YE)