For Immediate Release

April 12, 2005

Contact: Judith Platt
Ph: 202-220-4551
Email: jplatt@publishers.org

Turkish Publisher to Receive Third Annual Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award

Turkish publisher Abdullah Keskin, whose books on politically sensitive Kurdish issues have made him the target of censorship, persecution, and legal harassment by the Turkish government, has been named by the Association of American Publishers' International Freedom to Publish (IFTP) Committee to receive this year's Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award. It will be presented at the PEN American Center gala in New York on April 20.

Keskin, who with his wife and sister founded the publishing house Avesta in 1996 to publish books in Kurdish, which at the time was still forbidden by the Turkish government, has over the past decade published more than 200 books in Kurdish, Turkish and French by writers from all over the world, covering a range of areas including women's studies, current affairs, Mesopotamian culture, literary classics, science, poetry, and history. More than 10 of Avesta's books, including After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness: My Encounters with Kurdistan by Washington Post correspondent Jonathan Randal, have been banned by the Turkish State Security Council. Charged with disseminating separatist propaganda, Keskin has faced imprisonment and heavy fines. Although Turkey's laws have changed, the books remain banned.

Hal Fessenden, chairman of the IFTP Committee, said We're delighted to recognize Abdullah with this award for his unfaltering commitment to freedom of expression and for publishing such a rich and varied list. Upon being notified of the award, Keskin remarked that Throughout the Kurds' modern history, our ability to express ourselves and our culture freely has been repressed. I hope the work of Avesta and the authors we work with can contribute to the widening of freedoms enjoyed by the Kurds.

Created in 2002, the International Freedom to Publish Award recognizes a book publisher outside the United States who has demonstrated courage and fortitude in the face of political persecution and restrictions on freedom of expression. The award is named in honor of Jeri Laber, one of the founding members of the IFTPC and the committee's professional advisor for more than twenty-six years. She was a founder of Helsinki Watch (which ultimately became Human Rights Watch), and was its executive director from 1979 to 1995. Her memoir, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement, was published in 2002 by Public Affairs Books. Previous awards have gone to Iranian publisher Farkhondeh Hajizadeh and Indonesian publisher Joesoef Isak.

The IFTPC was founded in 1975 by the Association of American Publishers. It was one of the first groups in the world formed specifically to defend and broaden the freedom of the written word and to protect and promote the rights of book publishers and authors around the world. Among its activities, the committee monitors and publicizes free-expression issues around the world, sends fact-finding missions to countries where free expression is under siege, lobbies both at home and overseas on behalf of persecuted book publishers, and offers moral support and practical assistance to threatened publishers abroad.

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP's approximately three hundred members include most of the major commercial book publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and nonprofit publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies. The defense of intellectual freedom at home and freedom of expression worldwide, the protection of intellectual property rights in all media, and the promotion of reading and literacy are among the association's primary concerns.

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