Censorship of Translated Books in Turkey
İrem Konca · 2024
This chapter analyses censorship exerted on translated books starting from the late Ottoman period (19th century) and spanning throughout the Republican period of modern Turkey. A brief survey of the censorship cases in the Turkish context indicates that unlike the case in many countries in which censorship was exclusively exercised under a given dictatorial regime, censorship has been indiscriminately practised throughout Turkish intellectual and political history on both indigenous and translated books, regardless of the specific political conjuncture. More specifically, in cases where translation was instrumentalised by agents to further their ideologies, censorship was predominantly directed against translated books. As a result, translators and the other agents involved in the process have been suppressed by means of the threat, as well as the actual cases of conviction in Turkey. Focusing on the specific times when the practice of censorship was most prevalent and delineating the legal grounds therefor, this chapter aims to provide a brief analysis of censorship on translations as it pertains to the Turkish context.