On the 9th of February, 2011, the trial against Pinar Selek will be re-opened. She is accused on account of a coerced and later on withdrawn testimony, to have sparked off a bomb on the Istanbul Spice Bazaar in 1998, and was initially sued because of alleged contacts with the forbidden PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party). Now she is going to be tried again, despite the fact, that she was already acquittet twice in two earlier trials in 2001 and 2006.

At present Pinar Selek lives in Berlin as a fellow of the Writers-in-Exile program of P.E.N. Germany. Early in March, 2010, shortly after the message that the second acquittal was revoked by the Superior Court of Appeal in Ankara, P.E.N. Germany addressed their members as well as a number of renowned German artists, scientists and politicians, asking them to support the demand for an immediate stay of all legal proceedings by signing a respective appeal. Earlier on, there had been a huge campaign „Justice for Pinar Selek“ in Turkey, initiatd by the Turkish feminist network Amargi and with more than 100.000 signatories, among them Yasar Kemal, Orhan Pamuk, Noam Chomsky and Hrant Dink who was assassinated soon after. Unfortunately, these four names are missing on our long list of supporters, that contains almost 6.000 names by now. But the initiators of the Amargi campaign encouraged us to quote them here, together with our own signatories as well as a long list of Turkish writers, artists, scientists and politicians who they told us can be also considered supporting the action of P.E.N. Germany.

Among the first signatories of our appeal there were the two Honor Presidents of P.E.N. Germany, Christa Wolf und Günter Grass. Mr. Grass had already shown his solidarity with Pinar Selek on the occasion of his latest visit to Turkey in April, 2010, and has now, on the occasion of the re-opening of the trial, made another statement.

Norbert Lammert and Wolfgang Thierse, President and Vicepresident of the German Parliament as well as Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and Heiner Geißler, both former ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany, were also among the first signatories, and here is a small choice from the many noted names on our long list of supporters:

Dogan Akhanli, Fatih Akin, Elisabeth Badinter, Bai Lan, María Cecilia Barbetta, Alfredo Bauer, Mirko Bonné, Fred Breinersdorfer, Barbara Bronnen, Judith Butler, Dany Cohn-Bendit, Niels Brunse, Étienne Copeaux, Daniela Dahn, Dai Qing, Renan Demirkan, Ulrike Draesner, Hélène Flautre, Wieland Förster, Vivian Forrester, Stefanie Golisch, Tarik Günersel, Jiri Grusa, Peter Härtling, Eveline Hassler, Gert Heidenreich, Christoph Hein, Elfriede Jelinek, Jiao Guobiao, Reinhard Jirgl, Walter Kaufmann, Necla Kelek, Tanja Kinkel, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Ursula Krechel, Björn Kuligk, Alain Lance, Charles Lewinsky, Jürgen Lodemann, Kristof Magnusson, Gabriel Mazneff, Petra Morsbach, Martin Mosebach, Herta Müller, Leonie Ossowski, Erika Pedretti, Matthias Politycki, Marion Poschmann, Rongfen Wang, Rüdiger Safranski, Klaus Staeck, Imre Török, Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Jan Wagner, Günter Wallraff, Martin Walser, Ulrich Wickert, Zhou Qing und Gerhard Zwerenz.

Togehter with us and together with people from all parts of society and from 70 countries of the world, all these writers, scholars and artists are calling upont the Turkish judiciary power to finally end the proceedings against Pinar Selek and grant our Writers-in-Exile-Fellow the right to live free and undisturbed in her own country – a right for which Pinar Selek is also fighting at the European Court of Human Rights in Strassbourg. P.E.N. Germany will certainly support her in that struggle, too. 

Please,  find the complet list of signatories that is getting longer by the day,  at: http://www.ps-signup.de/results.php

For P.E.N. Germany

Christa Schuenke