ANKARA, Turkey – Ismail Besikci, a Turkish sociologist and former Nobel Prize candidate who suffered 17 years in jail for writing about Turkey’s persecuted Kurdish minority, was prevented Sunday from boarding a flight to attend a conference in the United States.
Besikci was accompanied by Ibrahim Gunduz, the head of the Ismail Besikci Foundation, who was also stopped from boarding the flight by Turkish security officials at Istanbul airport.
The pair was invited by the Kurdish American Society (KAS) in the United States for a conference at the Mustafa Barzani Graduate Peace Fellowship at the American University in Washington D.C. In addition, Besikci was scheduled to attend another conference in New York.
Gunduz said both he and Besikci held valid US visas, but were informed by Turkish security officials at the airport that the request to stop them had come from US authorities.
“We are shocked that Besikci was prevented from boarding the plane even though he had a visa. We hope that this mistake will be rectified as soon as possible,” said Yuksek Serindag, a spokesperson of the Kurdish American Society (KAS).
Kani Xulam, spokesperson of the American Kurdish Information Network, said that Besikci was not banned from the United States, but from leaving Turkey.
“America, despite its ‘respect’ for the prejudices of the oppressors of the Kurds, remains a country where free speech is exercised across the board, “ Xulam said. “In Turkey, however, Kurdish remains on a tight leash and its advocates, like Dr. Besikci, can be subjected, alas, to the same treatment.”
Besikci, who was born in 1939 and is an honorary member of the international writers’ association, PEN, was imprisoned for 17 years for the books and articles he wrote on Kurds and Kurdistan. Nearly all of his 36 books, which remain groundbreaking works on the Kurds, were banned in Turkey at one time or another.
While he was working at the sociology department of Ataturk University in Erzurum, he was dismissed from his post and arrested in 1971 for his writings on the Kurdish population in Turkey. He was released in 1974, but arrested eight times over the next 25 years. He served 17 years in prison on propaganda charges.
Until 1991, Turkey’s Kurds did not even enjoy the right to speak their own language, or celebrate their culture.
“For many years, Ismail Besikci was the only non-Kurdish person in Turkey to speak out loud and clearly in defense of the rights of the Kurds,” said Professor Martin van Bruinessen, an expert on the Kurds.
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