Police Releases Jailed British Artist

Arrested on September 12 after displaying a political collage showing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as US president George Bush's dog during a trial involving executives of the Global Peace and Justice Coalition (KURESEL-BAK), British collage artist Michael Dickinson was released from captivity on Monday.

Dickinson's release from an Istanbul police station comes after his spending three days at Istanbul's Umraniye prison and almost a week at the Zeytinburnu Foreigners Branch of the police.

A spokesman for the Initiative Against the Crime of Thought said the satirical artist, a British national living in Turkey and also a former lecturer at the Istanbul Yeditepe University, was "set free through the initiative of the British embassy that acted on the efforts of young and voluntary lawyers".

Dickinson, who was held alone in a cell despite there being no arrest or detention warrant issued for him, said after his release that Pakistani immigrants who were being held at the same police station during the duration of his stay were left hungry and that they were beaten while he was forced to listen to these happening.

He said he was held in difficult conditions, in a dirty cell and isolated from the outside world and that for approximately a week he stayed at the station as a 'guest' he was left hungry, sleepless and tired.

bianet learned that lawyers assigned to him by the Istanbul Bar Association as legal counsel were given no reason for his being held and had been told it was an "administrative decision".

Dickinson's trip behind the bars

The Dickinson controversy started when police in Istanbul seized his Best in Show collage poster displayed at the Global Peace and Justice Coalition (Kuresel BAK) exhibition on March 11.

In this collage, published at his own internet site under the title "Bush's Dog", he superimposed the head of PM Erdogan on to the body of a canine that appeared to have its bowtie type collar being prepared by President Bush.

The exhibition's organizers Ertan Kara, Gulen Sahin, Mehmet Demir, Filiz Ulget and Burak Delier were initially detained. A prosecutor then decided that non of the suspects other than Kara himself had responsibility for the poster.

On April 5, the prosecutor's office charged Kara under article 125/3-a of the Turkish Penal Code. Namely, for "insulting the dignity of the Prime Minister". His latest case was listed for September 12 at an Istanbul court.

However, Dickinson himself then petitioned to the Public Prosecutor's Office of Kadikoy claiming full responsibility for the collage and saying "if there is an offence, it should be me put on trial rather than Kara".

On July 11, the prosecution rejected Dickinson's request saying, "you do not have good intentions. Although there was no case, as if there was an investigation against you, you mobilized some civil society organizations and led to publications being made against our country. You are not trying to bring the issue to light but to use the incident as an instrument of propaganda against our country".

Dickinson, whose Tripod web site was banned without warning or appeal last year, had already rebuffed not being prosecuted in a June 19 dated new collage showing President Bush in military uniform playing a flute and PM Erdogan's head planted on a growling dog sitting at his feet. "Man's Best Friend" was the title of this collage and the satirist added in explanation "Since I haven't yet been officially charged, I thought I'd exercise what freedom I have left to express myself in this collage on a similar theme".

While no charges were leveled against Dickinson for the previous posters already online on his new web site, a third one he appeared to exhibit in front of cameras at the Kadikoy 3rd Criminal Court of First Instance in protest of Kara's trial on September 12 saw him behind the bars.

Dickinson was promptly placed under arrest for "insulting senior state officials" during Kuresel BAK organizer Kara's's hearing by displaying the poster publicly, taken to the Kadikoy police station, then to hospital for medical checkup and from there to the Umraniye Prison.

Dickinson's new poster showed Erdogan's head planted on a dog where a missile was placed up its tail. A collar, made out of the American flag decorated the dog while US dollar bills filled the ground as well as the dog's mouth. "We won't be Bush's dog" read a piece of paper on the dogs back while in front of it was stacks of 20 Turkish Lira notes. A cracked up world image showed in the background. (EO/II/YE)