him as a co-defendant. He testified at the court trial in Istanbul in 2002. Fatih Tas was acquitted. After the trial the BBC reported Tas as saying, "If Chomsky hadn't been here we wouldn't have expected such a verdict." While Chomsky was in Turkey for the trial he traveled to the southern city of Diyarbakır, the unofficial capital of the Kurdish population in Turkey, where he delivered a controversial speech, urging the Kurds to form an autonomous, self-governing community. Police handed recorded cassettes and translations of the speech over to Turkish courts for investigation a few days later. In June 2006, Turkish publisher Tas was again prosecuted, along with two editors and a translator, for publishing a Turkish translation of Manufacturing Consent, authored by Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. The defendants were accused under articles 216 and 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for "publicly denigrating Turkishness, the Republic and the Parliament" and "inciting hatred and enmity among the people". In December 2006, the four defendants were acquitted by Turkish courts. In 2003, in the New Humanist, Chomsky wrote about repression of free speech in Turkey and "the courage and dedication of the leading artists, writers, academics, journalists, publishers and others who carry on the daily struggle for freedom of speech and human rights, not just with statements but also with regular acts of civil disobedience. Some have spent a good part of their lives in Turkish prisons because of their insistence on recording the true history of the miserably oppressed Kurdish population." Views on the Sri Lanka conflict Chomsky supports the Tamils' right to self-determination in Tamil Eelam, their homeland in the North and East of Sri Lanka. In a February 2009 interview, he said of the Tamil Eelam struggle: "Parts of Europe, for example, are moving towards more federal arrangements. In Spain, for example, Catalonia by now has a high degree of autonomy within the Spanish state. The Basque Country also has a high degree of autonomy. In England, Wales and Scotland in the United Kingdom are moving towards a form of autonomy and self-determination and I think there are similar developments throughout Europe. Though they're mixed with a lot of pros and cons, but by and large I think it is a generally healthy development. I mean, the people have different interests, different cultural backgrounds, different concerns, and there should be special arrangements to allow them to