Professor convicted of insulting Ataturk

Posted By Blake Hounshell Monday, January 28, 2008 - 11:00 AM Share

Given its uncertain status, I often have trouble deciding whether to categorize stories about Turkey as "Middle East" or "Europe." This news, however, places Turkey firmly within the Middle Eastern political tradition:

A political science professor was convicted Monday of insulting the revered founder of modern Turkey and given a 15-month suspended prison sentence, a news report said. [...]

Atilla Yayla, a professor at Gazi University in Ankara and head of the Association for Liberal Thinking [...] was charged in connection with a 2006 speech in which he said the era of one-party rule under Ataturk, from 1925-45, was not as progressive as the official ideology would have Turks believe.

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