A NORTH-EAST artist living in Turkey will go on trial this week accused of insulting the country’s prime minister through a satirical collage.
Michael Dickinson, from Durham City, faces up to two years in jail if he is convicted in a trial to open in Istanbul on Thursday.
The charges arise out of Mr Dickinson’s picture Good Boy, showing the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, as a dog, with a stars and stripe leash and a nuclear missile for a tail.
He later exhibited similar collage, Best in Show, in an art exhibition staged by the Global Peace and Justice Coalition in Istanbul.
This was removed by police and he was told he would be prosecuted.
Mr Dickinson later spent 10 days in custody after he held up Good Boy outside the court in protest.
During a transfer, he attempted to escape, but was shot at by a policeman and recaptured.
Mr Dickinson is the uncle of 13- year-old Caroline Dickinson, who was raped and murdered in a French youth hostel 1996, while on a school trip.
He said last night: “There are people in Turkey who have no option of leaving.
“They are being persecuted for making legitimate political statements.
I decided to stay here and make a stand for freedom of expression.
“It’s an important principle of western civilisation. Turkey wants to be thought of as a civilised country and needs to shed its medieval laws.”
Mr Dickinson, who has been an English teacher in the country for 22 years, has been placed on an employment blacklist.
He said: “To save myself from total destitution, I am now just managing to pay the rent by telling fortunes with rune-stones in the streets of Istanbul.”
Mr Dickinson is a member of the Stuckists art movement, whose co-founder, Charles Thomson, has written to Gordon Brown about the case.
A response from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We are unable to interfere in the judicial process of other countries.”
An online protest petition, which can be found at mung being.com/petition.html has more than 500 signatures, including Professor Noam Chomsky, a vociferous critic of US foreign policy.
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