Fazil Say convicted

I wrote last year about Turkish composer Fazil Say's trial in Turkey. He has now been convicted of blasphemy and given a ten month suspended prison sentence for inciting hatred over a series of comments made on Twitter. He was tried for denigrating Islam, in a series of tweets he quoted the verse of Omar Khayyam attacking pious hypocrisy. The suspended sentence means that if he commits the same offence again in the next five years, he will go to prison. A recent Amnesty International report called the lack of freedom of speech in Turkey one of the country's 'most entrenched human rights problems'. Say's supporters have been re-tweeting the verses.    The young Turkish pianist, AyseDeniz Gokcin, will be playing some of Fazil Say's music at a concert on 25 April at St James's Piccadilly, London, where she is appearing with the Talent Unlimited Chamber Ensemble.