Rushdie

In an arson attack on an hotel in central Turkey on 2 July 1993 forty people were killed and many more injured. The main target was the left-wing Turkish author, Aziz Nesin, who had published extracts from Rushdie's Satamk Verses in his daily newspaper in defiance of its ban in Turkey. Left-wins writers and intellectuals had been staying in the hotel to attend festivities in honour of a sixteenth century poet who was hanged for defying Turkey's Ottoman rulers.

The police fought the fundamentalist demonstrators and rioters who prevented the fire engines from reaching the hotel. Them had earlier been a violent demonstration in Istanbul, when Mr Nesin announced he would print the extracts, although he did not wish to offend the feelings of Turkish people who are 98 per cent Muslims.

Rushdie claims that he had not given permission for the publication of the extracts, which was a form of piracy. The extracts had been printed over the title "Salman Rushdie - Thinker or Charlatan?". "They did not discuss with me what extracts would be used, or allow me to confirm the accuracy or quality of the translation ... It was a straightforward piece of literary piracy."

He wrote, in an article in The Observer, London, 4 July 1993:

"Ever since 1989, Iranian mullahs and Islamic zealots around the world have been quoting and reproducing decontextualised segments of the Satanic Verses. In use as propaganda weapons in the larger war against progressive ideas, secularist thought and the modern world, in which- the so-called "Rushdie affair" is no more than a skirmish' I was appalled to find that these self-proclaimed Turkish secularists and anti-fundamentalists were using my work in exactly the same unscrupulous fashion, albeit to serve different purposes. Once again, I was a pawn in somebody else's game….

"Nesin and his associates wished to use me, and my work, as cannon fodder in their straggle against the growth of religious zealotry in Turkey. And here is where I find myself in difficulties. For I, too, deplore, and have used every opportunity in the last five years to struggle against the spread of religious fanaticism across the face of the earth.

"Only last week I was able to attend a gatherin8 in Paris of the Academie Universelle des Cultures, an organisation created by President Mitterand under the presidency of the Nobel laureate, Elie Weisel, and attended by, among others, Wole Soyinka, Umberto Eco, Cynthia 0zick, the great Arab poet Adonis, and, from Turkey, the novelist Yashar Kamal. As members of this academy, we spent a good part of the day protesting against the murder of secularists by fundamentalists in Algeria, the persecution of secularists in Egypt, and, yes, the Iranian-inspired killing of the Turkish journalist Ugur Mumcu."

Commenting on the arson and riot, Rushdie said "It is hard to express the depth of rage and grief I feel today...

"I am utterly appalled by these God-driven mobs and by their wild lust for the blood of unbelievers, and so, in spite of all his mischief-making, I send my grief, my sympathy, and my outraged support to the families of the dead, to all those who fight against religious bigots; even those who have done so with such a lack of concern for my own fight; yes, even Mr Aziz Nesin."