Michael’s art is judged not to be insulting (From The Northern Echo)

Michael’s art is judged not to be insulting

8:20am Friday 26th September 2008

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A NORTH-EAST artist was last night celebrating after being cleared by a Turkish court of mocking the country’s prime minister through a satirical collage.

Michael Dickinson, 58, was acquitted by a court in Istanbul, after a judge decided the controversial depiction of Tayyip Erdogan was art and not insulting.

The charges arose out of Mr Dickinson’s picture Good Boy, showing the Turkish prime minister as a dog, with a stars and stripe leash and a nuclear missile for a tail.

Mr Dickinson, from Durham City, faced up to two years in jail, if convicted – but, following a 20- minute hearing yesterday, he walked away from the court a free man.

Speaking from Istanbul, he said: “I’m free, without even a fine. “I’m very relieved to have it gotten it all over and done with now, after having lived under the shadow of this charge for the past two years.

“My lawyer and I might talk later about possible compensation for the discomfort I suffered, but at the moment I’m just trying to let it sink in that I don’t have to worry about this any more.”

He added: “I hope that my aquittal might have an effect on the decisions of the judges of the many other cases where Turkish writers and artists face criminal charges for having expressed their opinions in writing, speech or art.”

Mr Dickinson said the judge had read out a testimonial letter from Professor Mehmet Ozer, an art teacher at Marmara University, saying that in his opinion, the Good Boy was more an example of political criticism rather than insult.

He added: “The judge said that he thought the collage was insulting according to Turkish standards. But, he also said this sort of art was quite normal in the European community, citing cartoonists in Spain and Germany sometimes caricaturing politicians as pigs or other animals, without being accused of being insulting.

“He said, as Turkey was trying to join the European community, a collage such as mine should not be held as a crime.”

Mr Dickinson is the uncle of 13- year-old Caroline Dickinson, who was raped and murdered in a French youth hostel in 1996, while she was on a trip from Launceston College, in Cornwall. He is also the co-founder of the Stuckists art group.

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