Seized Book Becomes Download Hit on the Internet

An unpublished book that was seized by Turkish police a week ago has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, but prosecutors have said they are not currently targeting readers of the manuscript.

Arrested journalist Ahmet Şık’s book “İmamın Ordusu” (The Imam’s Army) was put online Thursday afternoon, sparking a frenzy of downloads. An investigation has been started into the person or people who made the text available, but the prosecution said, “There is no investigation at the moment regarding the people who downloaded the book.”

A court order previously deemed it illegal to possess digital copies of the manuscript, leading to the carrying out March 24 of raids at the book’s printing house and among people who had digital copies of “The Imam’s Army.” The copies were deleted and the people involved were warned that they might be accused of aiding an illegal organization.

Şık was arrested in March in connection with the ongoing Ergenekon case, an investigation into an alleged gang accused of plotting to topple the government.

Acts of civil disobedience were meanwhile started Thursday by groups that featured the book on several websites. Members of one of these, the Anti-Thought-Crime Initiative, went a step further and informed on themselves to prosecutors. The initiative posted a petition on its website encouraging people to join the action.

Şanar Yurdatapan told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on behalf of the initiative that “since legal decisions are being made on political terms in Turkey” the members are not sure whether or not there will be judicial action against them.

“This movement for freedom of expression has been ongoing since 1995. Throughout these years we have partnered with people who have been accused of being Islamists, though I myself am an atheist,” Yurdatapan told the Daily News on Friday, saying that their point is not about the content of the book but about it being considered a tool of crime.

Şık’s lawyer Tora Pekin told the Daily News his client wanted his book to be published formally, but that he did not know what the journalist’s opinion would be under the current circumstances. Şık’s wife, Yonca Şık, preferred not to comment on the issue.
April 1, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News