A Turkish education union pressed yesterday for the impounding of a series of books mocking non-Muslim historical figures that were given out at several Istanbul schools last month, accusing the editor of “hate crime”.
“The books include phrases that are unscientific, anti-Semitic, anti-Armenian and humiliate Christians, non-religious people and people with a left-wing philosophy,” read a statement released by the Egitim-Sen union.
The legal complaint was filed after parents notified Egitim-Sen of the 15 books titled Big Steps Biographical Series, which were distributed free to some 1,000 elementary school children in Istanbul’s central Maltepe district.
“We want the books impounded, and all those responsible held accountable for their part in their distribution into the hands of 10-year-old children,” said Mehmet Aydogan, chief of the union’s Istanbul bureau which filed the charges.
“The fact that these ostracising books are being handed out freely shows the type of mentality we are up against,” Aydogan told AFP, noting that the incident was not the first and might be pointing to an increasing religious intolerance in Turkey.
The controversial books describe Albert Einstein as a “dirty and sloppy” child who walks barefoot and loves eating soap “despite the sad part that, in those years, Gestapos were putting Jews in ovens and making soap out of them”.
Another prominent scientist, Charles Darwin, is portrayed as a “clandestine Jew who hated his big nose” and spent 20 years to prove his evolution theory, “knowing he was only fooling himself”.
The mock biographies have caused outrage in social media and from Turks across the country, who said they were amazed to see Sigmund Freud described as the “father of perverts” and Santa Claus as a “bloke who should be prosecuted for housebreaking” in the series.
The union has filed charges of “hate crime” against the books’ editor, Ahmet Sirri Arvas, who is also the chief editor of Turkey’s oldest children’s magazine, Turkiye Cocuk.
“Those are not direct biographies, they are storified, abridged books … they are not scientific or academic pieces, or university dissertations either,” Arvas was quoted as saying by liberal daily Radikal on Sunday.
The phrases that drew criticism will be fixed in future editions, according to Arvas, who was not available for further comments yesterday.
The union complaint also asks for charges against the district governorate and district education authorities, on the grounds they committed “neglect of duty” by allowing the books to be handed out.
The incident was among several cases where a publication made its way to young students, bypassing authorities who failed to investigate their contents, according to Aydogan.
Back in March, the union filed a legal complaint against another book, after it was delivered in a similar way to several high schools in Istanbul’s Kartal district.
The book entitled I Am Removing This File: Armenian Issue, which branded Armenian genocide as “a bloody lie” and labelled Turkish sympathisers of Armenians as “devils among us”, was impounded after the complaint.
But unions and concerned parents manage to spot only some of those books which seem to be resurfacing in a different district every few months, union officials warned.
“There are so many weird publications out there, it is next to impossible for us to keep track on all of them,” Unsal Yildiz, head of Egitim-Sen, told AFP.
“We manage to spot some of them, but the real question is: what else is out there that we are not aware of?” Aydogan agreed.
In 2009, a popular television series titled Farewell was taken off the air after it sparked controversy for what critics branded an anti-Semitic narration of the stories of Palestinian victims during Israel’s “Cast Lead” Gaza offensive.
The series aired on Turkish state television dramatically strained ties between Turkey and Israel, with the latter summoning the Turkish ambassador to complain of the portrayal of Israeli soldiers as “murderers of innocent children”.
