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Turk Imprisoned For Claiming Quake Divine Punishment
ANKARA, May 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The owner of a Turkish pro-Islamic daily newspaper was sentenced to two years in prison for describing the 1999 killer earthquake as "divine punishment" on Turkey for its crackdown on Muslim activists and parties, news agencies said.
Mehmet Kutlular, owner of the pro-Islamic Yeni Asaya paper and leader of the Nur Cemaati sect, was imprisoned in Istanbul Tuesday for claiming that the earthquake, which claimed some 20,000 lives, was God's revenge against Turkey for its secularist policies.
He made the claim in a speech made in Ankara's Kocatepe mosque after prayers in October 1999 to commemorate the death of Nur founder, Said-i Nursi, the Turkish Daily News said.
Secularism is rigorously enforced in Turkey, a state overwhelmingly Muslim.
The Turkish court convicted Kutlular of "provoking hatred among people" by saying the epicenter of the earthquake was Golcuk naval base, where Turkish generals had met to organize the anti-Islamist campaign, news agencies said.
Two devastating earthquakes hit Turkey within the space of less than three months during 1999. The first - with its epicenter at Izmit in Turkey's heavily populated northwest - struck at 0302 hours local time on August 17th. It left some 20,000 people dead and thousands more homeless. The second struck just 100 kilometers away on November 12th, killing hundreds more.
Kutlular was convicted of inciting what Turkish authorities called religious hatred for a booklet distributed by his group in October 1999.
The booklet entitled "Warning from God: Earthquake," published by his newspaper, said the quake that struck Turkey's northwest in August that year, was divine retribution for Turkish governmental laws that ban Islamic-style head scarves in schools and public buildings.
The Turkish Daily News said that Ankara State Security Court No. 1 demanded a two year and one day prison sentence and a fine of Turkish Lira 352,000. However, in line with the Criminal Execution Law, Kutlular will be in prison for a minimum of nine months and 23 days.
A court last year sentenced Kutlular to two years in prison, but allowed him to remain free pending an appeal that was rejected by a court earlier this year.
On Tuesday, an administrative court ordered police to take him to Istanbul's Metris prison to begin his two-year sentence.
The BBC said that Kutlular's Yeni Asya daily reported that he would file a complaint over his jail sentence with the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.
The Turkish army, a staunch defender of secularism in mainly Muslim Turkey, is at the forefront of a relentless campaign against political Islam, news agencies said.
The campaign forced the resignation of Turkey's first Islamist-led government in 1997 and the subsequent banning of its major party, the Islamist Welfare Party.
Once the center of the Ottoman Empire, the modern Turkish Republic was established in the 1920s by nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk.
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