Dur (door) multicultural NGO took the initiative of declaring February the month of support for Turkish writer, publicist, publisher and human rights advocate Ragıp Zarakolu. He is in prison now due to his statements and textbooks supporting Armenians.
Today, during a meeting at the Writers’ Union of Armenia (WUA), Armenian writers and poets signed one book each, which will have been sent as a gift to the Turkish prison by the end of the month.
As Levon Ananyan, the president of WUA, stated, the Turkish writer has written a letter to the Turkish parliament even from the prison recently, stating that legalizing the recognition and condemnation of genocide is first of all Turkey’s and not other countries’ problem, “Zarakolu rejects the Turkish ice wall of denial and we have to make our voices heard for the Turkish society,” said Levon Ananyan.
The WUA president signed his Letter to a Turkish writer book, addressing the Turkish Armenians and published in 7 languages, for sending to Zarakolu.
According to film director Sargis Hatspanyan, a friend of Zarakolu’s family, a big part of the books published by Zarakolu and his wife Ayşe were dedicated to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In particular, in Memoirs about April 24 trilingual book there are biographies of Armenian writers, poets and other figures that were killed. Ayşe was also put into jail for publications supporting Armenians, she caught cancer and died and thanks to Zarakolu’s initiative, memorials will be erected in Turkey with the names of Armenian poets on them in the future. “When we sent Ragıp around 14 books last time, his counselor said that the writer wept with excitement and expressed his gratitude. If he is awarded a Nobel Prize, he is ready to express his gratitude to Armenians for that,” stated S. Hatspanyan and added that they banned the entrance of foreign-language books into Turkish prisons, but Zarakolu’s counselor expressed hope that the issue would be solved. Otherwise, books presented by the Armenian authors will be displayed at the exhibition that will be organized by Zarakolu in the future. “The world understands the Turk who lends a helping hand to an Armenian,” concluded S. Hatspanyan.
Let us remind that a group of Swedish MPs applied to the Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize of 2012 to famous human rights advocate, owner of Belge Publishing House Ragıp Zarakolu. According to Turkish Evrensel website, their application read, “Ragıp Zarakolu published books about the Armenian Genocide and the Kurdish issue, for which he was convicted a few times.”
Luisa SUKIASYAN
