MEP warns Turkey time running out

11 February 2008
BBC News

Protesters say the planners behind the killing are still at large. A senior Euro MP has said that the EU is losing patience with Turkey over its promise to change its controversial law restricting freedom of speech. Joost Lagendijk, joint head of the parliament's Turkey committee, was speaking as a court heard the case of murdered journalist Hrant Dink.

Mr Dink had been convicted under a law which bans "insulting Turkishness".

The MEP said Turkey's leaders had repeatedly promised to overturn the law and it was now time for them to act.

The EU opened talks on Turkish membership in 2005 but there have been repeated concerns about Ankara's willingness to make the necessary changes to its laws.

"We have to take ourselves seriously," Mr Lagendijk told the BBC News website.

"We're preparing a report for the European Parliament which will be voted on in April and if nothing has moved by then on freedom of expression, the report will be negative."

Article 301 of Turkey's penal code was used against Hrant Dink after he described the mass killings of Armenians in 1915-1917 as genocide.

A 17-year-old has confessed to his killing and another 18 people have gone on trial as associates. But there are claims that the real figures who planned the killing are not on trial.

Two days after Ankara relaxed the law banning Islamic headscarves in universities, Mr Lagendijk said he feared a public outcry over the decision would be used by the government as an argument against pushing through further reform.

"They've opened a Pandora's box and nobody is quite sure where it will end," he said.

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Bryan Ardouny: article 301 has become a painful reminder of open wounds of genocide

09.02.2008
PanARMENIAN.Net

Bryan Ardouny, Executive Director of the Armenian Assembly of America (AAA), addressed a letter to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to appreciate publication of "Freer Speech" editorial dedicated to the problem of article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

"We commend you for your Jan. 29 editorial ("Freer Speech") highlighting Turkey's continued and inexplicable use of Article 301 to indict citizens for openly discussing the Armenian Genocide.

"Turkey is the only country in the world where speaking the truth about the Armenian Genocide is regarded a prosecutable offense. For simply mentioning the atrocities, Hrant Dink was hauled to court and convicted in 2005. His life was ultimately taken by forces determined to squash public discussion of this fact of world history.

"Sadly, one year after Mr. Dink's assassination, Ankara has yet to overturn the climate of intolerance, prejudice and repression which led to this unspeakable crime. Instead, Mr. Dink's son, Arat Dink, was recently convicted under this much-criticized law for referencing the Armenian Genocide.

"Article 301 has become a painful reminder of the open wounds of genocide and its denial. It is time for Turkey to provide more than just lip-service and get to the business of reforming its laws and stop its ongoing campaign of denial," Mr Ardouny whote in his letter.

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A hell for free souls!

Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Turkish Daily News, Turkey
Orhan Kemal CENGIZ

Openness is the only cure for Turkey. Unfortunately for Turkey there is a price to pay for openness and that is the TRUTH about its past.

We cannot progress in solving our free speech problem at all. It is like a nightmare. The AKP (Justice and Development Party) has totally failed to make any significant change in Article 301. What they are proposing, as fellow columnist Yusuf Kanlı has wisely stated, is no reform, but an attempt to deceive. I accept that unless mentality changes the 301(s) will always be replaced by something else. But there is blood over this article, it turned into a terrible sin; it is a symbolic duty, a moral obligation for this government to get rid of this article.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals in the case against Orhan Pamuk, clearly showed that the judiciary has no intention to change its stance toward “denigrating Turkishness.” The Appeal Court comes to the conclusion that every Turkish citizen can bring a compensation case against Pamuk for his remarks about the “Armenian genocide.” This shows that even if we get rid of Article 301, the judiciary will immediately fill this gap with other very strong sanctions from private law. The last ruling of the Appeal Court concluded that 70 million Turks can bring cases against Pamuk because of his “insulting remarks” about Turkishness!

One hundred other 301s

Atilla Yayla received a suspended 15 month prison sentence this Monday because he allegedly mentioned Atatürk by referring to him as “this man/guy.” He has to pay attention to every single word he utters from now on. If he is found guilty once again, he has to serve this one year and three months in addition to the new sentence he receives. He has to remain silent. Will any academic dare say anything about Kemalism from now on then? I do not think so.

I also would like to mention some other cases that you may think are practical jokes.



Lawyer on trial

Once I saw a caricature in a magazine, I cannot remember its name. This caricature still vividly exists in my mind. In the first scene we saw a man who was hanged on a wall with his wrists cuffed. He says, “I know my rights, call my lawyer.” In the second scene we have a broader perspective and realize that there is another man beside him hanging on the wall like him, saying, “I am here.” This caricature has always reminded me of my dear friend Tahir Elçi, who is one of the frontline fighters of human rights in Turkey. In 1999 we were attending hearings in the European Court of Human Rights. Tahir was following the most horrific cases in southeastern Turkey. I was trying to help him before the European Court. We attended the hearings before the court in the Özkan and others vs. Turkey case, which was one of the most tragic village destruction cases the court had ever handled. One month later, I was representing Tahir before the European Court in the case Tahir Elçi and others vs. Turkey, in which the torture and mistreatment Tahir and his friends suffered was being reviewed by the court. It was a funny experience for all of us. He was the lawyer of the plaintiffs in a hearing and just one month later he was a plaintiff himself, giving testimony regarding his own case in another hearing in front of the same court.

Tahir has always followed the most difficult cases in Turkey and of course he has never been away from trouble. One of the recent cases he has been following is Uğur Kaymaz's case that concerns the extra judicial killing of 12-year-old Uğur and his father in front of their house in Mardin Kızıltepe in the Southeast. The police claimed that there was an exchange of fire between the deceased “terrorists” and themselves. However, forensic examination showed that both victims were shot from behind. Eskişehir Criminal Court was handling this case, but what happened in the end was that the members of the special forces who carried out this operation were acquitted. However, Elçi is now being tried because of his alleged “attempt to influence a fair trial.” After one of the hearings in the Kaymaz case, Tahir had given the following statement to the press: “We have not seen a fair attitude from the judges. They were insensitive toward our demands. We want a unbiased trial, we want justice.” This is the statement that put him on trial.

Sometimes I see Turkey as a surrealist country. Where else could this happen? The accused, in an apparent extra judicial case, have been acquitted but the lawyer of the victims put on trial with charges of “attempting to influence a fair trial” in a country in which the “real influencers” have never been tried.



Another surrealist case

Nalan Erkem was the member of board of directors of the İzmir Bar Association and she was responsible for the bar's “Torture Prevention Committee.” I had the privilege to work with her in this committee that we established together. As a result of its work, many cases of torture were brought to daylight and many cases were filed against the security forces that allegedly mistreated people under custody. On Nov. 5-6, 2003 there was an attempted revolt in the children dormitories of İzmir's Buca Prison. Nalan and some other lawyers went to prison to find out what had been happening there. They spoke to children and recorded their testimonies. The children had claimed that the gendarmeries forces and the guards beat them and they were kept in the cells stripped naked. The lawyers also noted that there were bruises and lesions on their faces and bodies. After exhausting attempts to bring the grievances of these children to the attention of the relevant authorities in İzmir and receiving no response to their applications, the lawyers sent a petition to the then minister of justice. Nalan had also held a press conference and read out this petition to the members of the press. Again, the accused who allegedly mistreated the juveniles in the prison were acquitted but Nalan, an anonymous heroine in the Turkish human rights movement, is on trial. The prosecutor argued that by holding this press conference, Erkem abused her duties.

In short, our freedom of expression problem is not limited to Article 301 and Turkey has become a hell for free souls!

Note:

The next hearing in Tahir Elçi's case is tomorrow and it is before the Eskişehir Court for Serious Crimes in Eskişehir at 9:00 am. The first hearing in Nalan Erkem's case will be held on Feb. 27 at 11:00 am in the fourth branch of the Court for Serious Crimes in İzmir.

* The writer can be reached at orhan.kemal@tdn.com.tr

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Turkey should improve freedom of speech

24.01.2008
PanARMENIAN.Net

"If Turkey ever wants to be part of Europe, it has to improve its record concerning freedom of religion and expression,” said leader of the Dutch Christian Democratic faction, Pieter van Geel. The Dutch Christian Democrats support Turkish membership of the European Union in principle.

In 2006 the Dutch parliament adopted a law recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Presently, the majority of parliamentarians call on the Turkish government to repeal article 301 which restricts freedom of speech.

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Hrant Dink, a man who believed that Turkey would change from within

19.01.2008
Todaqy's Zaman
JASPER MORTIMER ANKARA

A year ago this afternoon, television-viewers who tuned into 24-hour news channels saw a man in a brown suit lying facedown on the pavement of an Istanbul boulevard.

He lay all alone and from underneath the white plastic sheet over his torso there seeped a small pool of blood.

A small percentage of Turks then knew the identity of the man who had been shot outside his office’s building. But the next day the whole country would know the name of Hrant Dink, 52, the editor of Agos weekly and champion of the Armenian cause. Newspapers splashed his assassination across their front pages, with banner headlines such as “The biggest treachery” (Sabah) and “Hrant Dink is Turkey” (Milliyet).

Like a low-magnitude earthquake that cracks a house rather than flattens it, the murder of Dink frightened all thinking Turks, exposing the fault lines of their society. The aftershocks went beyond Turkey. As the European Union and US Congress condemned the assassination, critics of Turkey said it showed the country could not tolerate free speech. Friends of Turkey hung their heads in shame.

The killing turned out to be the start of two debates that would endure through 2007. The first was between liberal and conservative Turks over freedom of expression and, in particular, the Armenian question. The second was between Turkish Armenians and US Armenians over how to pursue the tragedy of 1915-22.

Dink’s body lay on the gray paving stones for an unconscionably long time. Television channels interspersed the live scene on the street with archive footage of Dink, showing his sensitive eyes and ruggedly handsome face. Viewers, such as this correspondent who watched from the Associated Press newsroom in Cairo, were appalled that the police continued to keep him lying in the cold for hours because of the slow-moving forensic scientists.

A burly man burst through the police line like a rugby player going for a try, yelling “Abi!” (older brother). This was Dink’s brother, Yervant, who was allowed to see what death had wrought before being ushered back to the edge of the cordon, where he squatted, crying his eyes out.

Eventually Dink’s corpse was removed by ambulance. But people did not go back to their daily lives. Some 5,000 Turks came together in Taksim Square, the end of the boulevard where he was shot. They did not know who had killed Dink, but they knew the mentality behind the many death threats he had received.

Fed up with the bigotry that masquerades as patriotism, they took felt-tip pens and sheets of white cardboard and scrawled two slogans that were to become icons of Dink’s death. “We are all Hrants,” “We are all Armenians,” they wrote in Turkish and Armenian.

From Malatya to İstanbul

It was a tribute to a man born in the provincial city of Malatya, raised in an Armenian orphanage and who saw himself as such a mixture of Turk and Armenian that he was hurt when the military refused to give him a commission even though he had scored 100 percent on his national service examination.

In 1996 Dink had founded Agos, the only Armenian newspaper that pulled no punches in a society where Armenians have long felt they are second-class citizens. The paper publishes its articles in Turkish as well as Armenian because Dink wanted Agos to reach out to Turks.

Agos scored a scoop in 2004 when it revealed that Sabiha Gökçen, Atatürk’s adopted daughter, was Armenian. Hrant had found her relatives in Armenia and published the story hoping it would serve to bring Turks and Armenians closer together. After all, the late Gökçen had been a role model for Turkish women, the first female pilot.

But many Turks found the story a nasty surprise. The head of the armed forces called it “a crime against national unity.”

However Dink persevered in championing equal rights for Armenians and that what had happened to his community in 1915-22 was not a case of the unfortunate excesses of war, as the officials would have it. To call those events an atrocity or genocide had been a Turkish taboo for decades, but Dink managed to argue that position in such a sensitive way that he won the respect of those who flatly disagreed with him.

When the state finally granted him a passport -- after many refusals -- he told audiences in Europe and America that today’s Turks should not be punished for the sins of 90 years ago. And he followed this through to the point of criticizing laws in countries such as France and Switzerland that penalize people who deny that Armenians suffered genocide.

“A bullet has been shot at free thought and our democratic way of life,” said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hours after the murder. Erdoğan called Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II and assured him that the killer would be caught.

Turkey has a long record of unsolved murders of prominent journalists and freethinkers, but this time the police performed.

They found a picture of the killer running with a pistol on a shop’s security camera. It was broadcast on television and seen by his father, who called the authorities. Within 32 hours of the murder, the killer was arrested.

He was 17, an unemployed high school dropout from the Black Sea city of Trabzon. His uncle told TGRT television he had been living “aimlessly” and must have been manipulated by his older associates. Foremost among his associates, and subsequently arrested, was an ultra-nationalist who had previously been jailed for bombing a McDonald’s restaurant.

The matter did not stop there. Everybody knew this was not just one small group of extremists. As Radikal columnist İsmet Berkan put it: “Those who created nationalist sentiment in Turkey have fed such a monster that there are many youngsters on the streets who do not find the ... state nationalist enough and are ready to take the law into their own hands.”

Thousands of people thought likewise and flocked to Dink’s funeral. Traffic officers closed off the area in front of Agos’s office for the cortege to start, but more and more mourners came and the officers scrambled to close the whole boulevard and redirect traffic. Eventually some 100,000 people were walking behind Dink’s hearse, a river of humanity flowing across the city.

Many of the mourners had never read Agos and they did not accept that 1915-22 was genocide, but they marched to affirm that Turkey must not be a country that kills people for their opinions.

To the placards carried by the mourners, reading “We are all Hrant Dinks” and “We are all Armenians,” a new one was added: “The killer is 301” -- a reference to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which outlaws “insulting Turkishness.” Dink had received a six-month suspended sentence for violating 301 in an editorial and at the time of his death he was facing another prosecution under the same law.

“It is unacceptable to judge and imprison someone because of his thoughts, let alone to kill him,” Patriarch Mesrob said during the funeral mass. In the Holy Mother of God Church sat the deputy prime minister, the interior minister and two generals. In death Dink had won the respect of those who harassed him in life.

The mourning of Dink continued after the funeral and evolved into something else. At media parties it became chic to talk glowingly of Hrant and say how much one missed him. But some journalists had the candor to puncture this hypocrisy by asking where all these “friends” were when Dink was on trial under 301.

Ultra-nationalists

Then the uglier side of Turkey reared its head. The weekend after the funeral, fans at a football stadium hoisted placards reading: “We are all Turks.” Vicious comments about Dink and his death began appearing on nationalistic Web sites. It emerged that the teenager who shot Dink had posed with two officers in front of a Turkish flag at the Samsun police station where he was initially detained. Worse still, a video appeared on YouTube that showed Dink’s body on the pavement as a man sang a song which contained the line: “If someone betrays his country, he will be taken care of immediately.”

Clearly there are two Turkeys: one is cosmopolitan and liberal, the other is ethnically chauvinist and conservative. Fortunately, the first Turkey dominates the media. Newspapers denounced the YouTube song and the police who posed with the killer, forcing prosecutors to investigate both.

The division between these Turkeys retarded moves to reform Article 301. After Dink’s death, Erdoğan invited NGOs to suggest amendments to the law but, aware of popular sentiments, he took no action until after the July elections.

The European Union warned Turkey that it could never join the club with 301. And then Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, now president, responded by repeatedly promising the law would be revised. The amendment was presented to the Cabinet earlier this month but contrary to forecasts, it was not quickly approved and sent to Parliament. The ruling Justice and Development Party is wrangling over it, with Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çicek seen as a leading advocate of the view that the original wording should be preserved as much as possible.

In America, Dink was deeply mourned among the country’s estimated 1 million Armenians. But during his life many American Armenians opposed him.

In three articles in Agos in 2004, Dink had argued that the time had come for Armenians to step back from insisting that Turkey recognize the “genocide” of 1915-22, as this had become an unhealthy fixation.

(In one article, he wrote that the craving for empathy from Turks, which he termed the “Turk,” had become like a tumor in the Armenian soul. “It is obvious that the ‘Turk’ is both the poison and the antidote of Armenian identity,” he said. Unfortunately, Internet cafe browsers misread these lines. The teenage killer reportedly told his interrogators that he shot Dink because he had said Turkish blood was poisonous.)

The Armenian world should not “enchain itself to the sense of fairness of others,” Dink wrote. “The time has come to leave everybody alone with their conscience.” Armenians should re-channel their energies into improving the state of Armenia.

These ideas were radical for the mainstream of the Armenian diaspora, for whom the campaign for genocide recognition has become a “principle of community organization and power legitimation,’’ said Gerard Libaridian, professor of modern Armenian history at Michigan University.

Dink had said other things that were not appreciated by the mainstream, recalled Razmik Panossian, a writer on Armenian affairs who lives in Montreal.

“He portrayed an image of Armenians in Turkey which did not fit into the traditional thinking of the diaspora of how awful things are,” Panossian recalled. “Hrant Dink was saying, ‘Yes, things aren’t perfect, there are lots of problems, but Turkey is democratizing ... and we do have a community life.’”

The Armenian lobby in the US also objected to Dink’s advocacy of Turkey’s bid to join the EU. “A lot of Armenians in the diaspora don’t agree with this ... They just can’t see Turkey being progressive enough to be part of this club,” Panossian said.

Libaridian recalled that the criticism of Dink went as far as his being “branded as someone who was working for the Turkish state.”

“But once he was assassinated by a Turk, he became a hero,” Libaridian said.

Bill in the Congress

Within hours of the assassination, a principal group in the lobby called on the White House not to oppose the coming bill in the Congress on 1915-22. “In light of this terrible tragedy, it is all the more inappropriate for the administration to oppose congressional reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide,” said Hirair Hovnanian, chairman of the board of the Armenian Assembly of America.

Eleven days later the bill itself, House Resolution 106, was introduced in the Congress. It did not require the president to take any steps against Turkey, but it said 1915-22 did constitute genocide -- and that would have cast a long shadow over relations with Turkey.

President George W. Bush and Turkey mobilized against the bill. Turkey sent envoys to lobby Washington and the head of its armed forces warned that relations with the United States would never be the same. Eight former secretaries of state urged the Congress to drop the bill as potentially damaging to US military interests in Iraq and Afghanistan and harmful to reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia.

Eventually congressional support for the bill collapsed, the decisive argument being the impact of Turkish retaliation on the military campaign in Iraq.

Surprisingly little heed was paid to the views of Turkish Armenians, who also opposed the bill.

Patriarch Mesrob spoke against 106, but members of the lobby dismissed his remarks as being made under the “intimidation” of the Turkish government.

The patriarch did himself no favors in September when he issued a mealy-mouthed statement about 1915-22. Asked by Today’s Zaman whether there had been genocide, he replied: “We had big problems in the past. I find in particular the approach of … collective punishment of Armenians quite wrong. It wasn’t the whole Armenian community who took up arms against the government, but I believe the Turkish Republic should not be accused of what happened then.”

An American Armenian, who knew Turkey and spoke the language, published an open letter to Mesrob rebuking him for his pusillanimity in the Today’s Zaman interview. Writing on the eve of Mesrob’s visit to America, Rachel Goshgarian told the patriarch to speak with a “strong voice. Let it not be a voice mitigated by fear.”

The same criticism could not be leveled at Agos, which regularly refers to the “systematic massacres” of 1915-22. And Agos’s new editor, Dink’s replacement, also opposed bill 106.

Etyen Mahçupyan said the paper wanted Turks to re-appraise 1915-22 on “moral grounds alone.” If the bill had been passed, then the issue would have become part of Washington-Ankara negotiations. And if Turkey were later to shift its position on 1915-22, “then Turks will view it not as a sincere re-evaluation, but as part of the bargaining between Washington and Ankara.”

Today’s Zaman tried to get the lobby’s response to this argument. Both the Armenian Assembly of America and the Armenian National Committee of America did not reply to repeated requests emailed to their press officers. A prominent US Armenian, Harut Sassounian, publisher of The California Courier, refused to respond, saying: “I have no guarantees that anything I say to you will be properly reported, or allowed to be reported, by your editors who have to be concerned about Article 301 to avoid being put in jail.” But Libaridian and Panossian agreed to give what they perceived to be the lobby’s response to objections from Istanbul. They both said that the lobby views Turkish Armenians as speaking under intimidation.

“Their voice does not count because they are seen as a hostage community that is not free to say what it feels,” said Libaridian who, like Panossian, added this was not his view. Libaridian said the lobby’s argument against Mahçupyan’s objection would be that the “internationalization of the Armenian question is a valid strategy.”

19.01.2008

JASPER MORTIMER ANKARA


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Gov’t ready to take steps to amend Article 301

26.12.2007
Today's Zaman Ankara

Within two weeks the Turkish government will assess an amendment on a controversial law that has been widely considered as a stumbling block for freedom of expression in Turkey, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin said Tuesday.

Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin says the government will assess an amendment on the Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code within the next two weeks.
Şahin told reporters that his ministry will hand the draft amendment to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which makes it a crime to "insult Turkishness," to the cabinet within 15 days.

Turkey has been under heavy pressure from the EU to amend or scrap Article 301, which has been used to prosecute Turkish writers and intellectuals, notably for comments on the killings of Anatolian Armenians in 1915 under the Ottoman Empire. Last month, the EU's executive commission criticized Turkey for not carrying out any substantial reforms in the past two years and urged the government, which was given a strong mandate when it was re-elected to power, to reinvigorate the stalled reform process.

The most important element in the draft amendment is that it requires prosecutors to secure permission from the Justice Ministry to launch court trials against the expression of opinions, Şahin said. This change is expected to lead to a decrease in the number of cases opened under Article 301. The term "Turkishness" in the article is expected to be changed to "the Turkish Republic," while the expression "insulting Turkishness" is expected to be replaced by "insulting the Turkish nation."

Discussions on the amendment are being carried out both by lawyers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Justice Ministry, Şahin noted.

The government has so far refused to heed EU demands to amend the article without delay, saying the issue will be taken up as part of its broader drive to reform the current Constitution, which was drafted under military rule in 1982.

Releasing its annual progress report in November, the European Commission called on Ankara to make "significant further efforts" toward improving freedom of expression and religion, stressing that more people were prosecuted under Article 301 last year than in 2005. It particularly urged steps to repeal or amend Article 301, saying accession talks will not be opened on at least one of 35 negotiation chapters if the law is not amended or repealed.

Two years ago the government tried Nobel Literature Laureate Orhan Pamuk under article 301 for his remarks on the events of 1915-16, but he was acquitted on a legal technicality. Claiming that the killings of Anatolian Armenians amounted to genocide is a criminal offense in Turkey under Article 301. Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has recommended that the EU not extend accession talks to the key areas of justice and human rights until the article is changed.

Critics say Turkey's centre-right government is dragging its feet, fearing that amending the law could spark a nationalist backlash at a time when EU membership is becoming less popular among Turks. EU officials said the law was poisoning Turkey's relations with Armenia and that it is a burden on the media and NGOs in Turkey.

Prominent Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink, who was shot dead in İstanbul in January by an ultranationalist youth, had also been handed a suspended jail sentence under Article 301 for his comments on the Armenian issue. Tens of thousands of people marched through İstanbul at his funeral to protest against ultranationalist violence. As the first anniversary of Dink's assassination on Jan. 19 approaches, it is not yet clear when the cabinet will approve the amendment on Article 301. Earlier this month veteran publisher Ragıp Zarakolu, who could receive a jail sentence of up to three years for insulting national identity, described Article 301 as "very dangerous."

"If writers and journalists are depicted as traitors or enemies of Turkey, it becomes difficult to be in front of Turkish public opinion. It opens the door to being lynched or killed by ultranationalist gangs," Zarakolu said, citing the example of Dink.

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Turkish Publisher Faces Jail Over Armenia Book

Tuesday 4, December 2007
Armenia Liberty
By Gareth Jones, Reuters

A Turkish publisher could receive a jail sentence on Wednesday of up to three years for insulting national identity under a law the European Union says unfairly restricts freedom of speech and wants scrapped.

"Tomorrow's hearing may bring a final verdict in my trial, which began in 2005. The prosecutor wants the maximum penalty," publisher Ragip Zarakolu told Reuters on Tuesday.

Prosecutors accuse Zarakolu of insulting "Turkishness" under article 301 of Turkey's penal code for publishing a Turkish language translation of a book by London-based author George Jerjian called "The Truth Will Set Us Free". The book urges reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and covers the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One, a highly sensitive issue for Turkey.

Armenia, backed by many Western historians, says as many as 1.5 million of its people suffered systematic genocide at Turkish hands at that time. Turkey denies there was genocide and says many Muslim Turks as well as Christian Armenians were killed in inter-ethnic conflict as the Ottoman Empire collapsed under pressure of war. Affirming that the killings amounted to genocide is a criminal offence in Turkey. Nobel Literature Laureate Orhan Pamuk is among writers prosecuted for his comments on the events of 1915-16, though he was acquitted on a legal technicality.

"I am against all forms of restriction on free expression... I did not even write this book, but Turkish people have a right to know what Armenians think," said Zarakolu, head of the Belge International Publishers.

Zarakolu said he would appeal against any conviction. He has often been a target of Turkish prosecutors over the decades for his stance on freedom of expression and for publishing books the authorities have disapproved of.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's conservative government, under heavy EU pressure, is mulling ways of amending article 301, though analysts say the real problem lies not in the text but in the conservative mindset of many judges and prosecutors.

"The government could have changed the law already. It is a very dangerous article. If accusations depict writers and journalists as traitors or enemies of Turkey, it is not so simple to be in front of Turkish public opinion," said Zarakolu. "It opens the door to our being lynched or killed by ultra-nationalist gangs," he said, citing the example of prominent Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink who was shot dead in Istanbul in January by an ultra-nationalist youth.

Dink had been handed a suspended jail sentence under article 301 for his comments on the Armenian issue. Tens of thousands of people marched through Istanbul at his funeral to protest against ultra-nationalist violence.

Members of the European Parliament visiting Turkey this week said article 301 was harming Turkey's bid to join the EU. "This latest case underlines that the Turkish government's promise to reform article 301 cannot come too soon," Richard Howitt, a British Labor MEP, said in a statement.

"Authors expressing peaceful views should never lead to imprisonment. The Turkish government has understood this and it is now for the Turkish parliament to pass, and for the Turkish courts to respect," he said.

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Reporters Without Borders: 301 needs "deeds not words"

13 November 2007
The New Anatolian / Ankara

The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have urged the Turkish authorities to move to end the words and start acting to change Article 301 of criminal law allowing prosecution for “insulting Turkish identity” after the Turkish Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin declared the government intends to amend the law.

“It’s been two years now since, alongside Turkish journalists and press freedom organizations, we have called for the law to be amended and proceedings dropped against those who criticize, on the pretext that they are” insulting Turkish identity,” the worldwide press freedom organization declared.

“We cannot forget that Turkish authorities have used Article 301 as a tool of terrible repression. It gives voice to and stokes up nationalist tensions at work in Turkey and finds fervent advocates in the Turkish legal system,” the organization said.

Turkish journalist of Armenian origin Hrant Dink who was murdered on January 19, 2007 was himself prosecuted under this article. His son, Arat Dink was given a one-year suspended prison sentence on 11 October, for reprinting in the weekly Agos an interview given by his father to the Reuters news agency, in which he recalled that the massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 were genocide”, it continued.

Justice Minister Sahin told the Anatolian News Agency that the Justice and Development (AK) Party government had decided to amend Article 301. He stressed that the council of ministers would “at the first opportunity” examine about five drafts on the basis of proposals from civil organizations, select some and then seek debate on them in parliament.

This statement was in response to the conclusions of the annual progress report on Turkey unveiled by the European Commission.

The report stressed that “considerable effort is still required on freedom of expression” and urged the Turkish government to take “immediate steps” in this area.

Turkish President Abdullah Gül told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 3 October that he was in favor of amending Article 301. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made similar promises in November 2006 ahead of the publication of the annual EU report.

Article 301 headed “denigration of Turkish identity, of the republic, the institutions or organs of state”, says whoever "openly denigrates the government, organs of state justice or military or police structures” risks a prison sentence of six months to three years.

Not only do the Turkish courts severely apply this law, but they ignore paragraph 4 which stipulates that, “Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime”.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Turkey moves to change speech law

6 November 2007
BBC News

The Turkish government says it will change a controversial law restricting freedom of expression.

Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said a new bill would be put before the Turkish parliament in the coming days.

The law, known as Article 301, bans perceived insults to Turkish identity or the country's institutions.

It has often been invoked by nationalists against those who argue the Ottoman empire committed genocide against Armenians.

Earlier on Tuesday the European Commission said restrictions on freedom of expression were blocking Turkey's progress towards EU membership.

"It is not acceptable that writers, journalists, academics and other intellectuals... are prosecuted for simply expressing a critical but completely non-violent opinion," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said.

"The infamous Article 301 must be repealed or amended without delay," he added.

Nobel-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk and Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink were both prosecuted under the law for their comments on the mass killings of Armenians.

Hrant Dink was shot dead outside his Istanbul office in January 2007 and his murder revived a debate about the law.

Many said his prosecution under Article 301 made him a target for radical nationalists.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Nobel laureate's stand causes an uproar

Updated: 11/04/07 10:54 AM
Buffalo News, United States
By Jeff Simon ARTS AND BOOKS EDITOR

Jeff Simon is very perceptive in his observation below:

"February 2005 – Pamuk is charged by the Turkish government with the equivalent of sedition for talking, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, about the 1915 Turkish genocide of the Armenians (the second greatest of the 20th century after the Holocaust) and the battles with the Kurds in current Turkey.

“Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in those lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” he said.

The uproar in the international literary world is unanimous. Those condemning the government of Turkey – the keystone of Bush’s Middle East policy because of our bases for the Iraq War – are a who’s who of literary titans: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Updike, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Gunter Grass, Jose Saramago. "

"Oct. 10, 2007 – It becomes clear that, as usual, a great writer was the canary in the coal mine. On this day, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives votes to recognize and condemn Armenian genocide by the Turks as Pamuk discussed and many Western nations have done. Turkey recalls its Ambassador to America."

All Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk ever wanted to do was write fiction. He never wanted to be the center of a geopolitical storm – and yet he is. Here’s a timeline of how it happened:

February 2005 – Pamuk is charged by the Turkish government with the equivalent of sedition for talking, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, about the 1915 Turkish genocide of the Armenians (the second greatest of the 20th century after the Holocaust) and the battles with the Kurds in current Turkey.

“Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in those lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” he said.

The uproar in the international literary world is unanimous. Those condemning the government of Turkey – the keystone of Bush’s Middle East policy because of our bases for the Iraq War – are a who’s who of literary titans: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Updike, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Gunter Grass, Jose Saramago.

January 2006 – Charges are dropped. Often cited is Turkey’s desire to be a member of the European Economic Union, where body-slamming dissident writers – especially for what they say in Swiss interviews – is not exactly held with favor.

October 2006 –Pamuk wins the Nobel Prize for literature. In his earlier New Yorker review of Pamuk’s 2004 novel “Snow,” perennial Nobel candidate John Updike virtually nominated Pamuk for the Nobel and predicted the moves against him at home: “We should not forget that in Turkey, insofar as it partakes of the Islamic world’s present war of censorious fanaticism against free speech and truth-telling, to write with honest complexity about such matters as head scarves and religious belief takes courage. Pamuk, relatively young as he is at the age of 54, qualifies as that country’s most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize, and the near-assassination of Turkey’s last winner must cross his mind.”

Sept. 24, 2007 – “Other Colors,” a book of essays by Pamuk, is published in America.

Oct. 10, 2007 – It becomes clear that, as usual, a great writer was the canary in the coal mine. On this day, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives votes to recognize and condemn Armenian genocide by the Turks as Pamuk discussed and many Western nations have done. Turkey recalls its Ambassador to America.

The final note has yet to happen. Lobbyists lobby and arms are twisted – left arms, right arms, all possible arms. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asks that the resolution be withdrawn. The House backs off a bit.

Just as the fatwa against Salman Rushdie may have been an early tremor of what happened on 9/11, Pamuk’s troubles foreshadowed what could yet turn out to be massive tension between the United States and its strongest Mideast ally.

His part of the world

Pamuk, on the phone during an appearance in Portland, Ore., is adamant about the thing any reader of his novels would know instantly: “I’m a writer. I write fiction. My books are not about explaining my part of the world to the other part of the world. My books, in fact, are about life.”

“I’m a Turk” though, he says, and “for me, it’s a Turkish issue, an issue of human rights and free speech. That’s the point I care about. For me it’s an issue of free speech to be able to talk about that in Turkey. It’s a moral issue, rather than an international political problem.”

While Pamuk will teach at Columbia in the fall and live in the United States with his family, as he has for some years, his brother is still in Turkey. While he says he has no fear about his brother’s welfare for anything he might say, he knows that if he went back home he would have to be accompanied by an “armed guard.”

“Turkey is not a country like totalitarian Russia or China where I’d say something and they’d twist the arm of my brother, that’s wrong.”

The man on the phone is, in fact, clearly uncomfortable in the role of explaining his part of the world to ours but as a dissident apostle of free speech, he is certainly willing. But when the subjects later turn to literature, himself and movies, he is warmer and much wittier – even funny.

One immense problem, he sees, is the Western media. And “what they don’t understand is that in a country like Iran, there are so many secular people. Or in a country like Russia, that there are people who don’t believe in what the government does. There are people who are entirely in disagreement with their governments. ... I think that representation of these people is missing in European and American media.”

“The anger and resentment that is felt against the United States or the West in general is not based on religion. It is not embedded in Islam or, in fact, any other religion but should perhaps be explained and analyzed in relation to other sentimentals than Islam. ... Misrepresentation, poverty, being on the margins, being provincial, not being included in the global decision-making process, made these people feel strong resentment and anger. ... Religion is used and abused by a minority which is manipulating nationalist and loyalist sentiment – for politics.”

The worldly Nobel laureate and practiced analyst on the phone, he says with endearing selfdeprecation, is far from the original writer.

Back when he was previously a visiting writer at the famous writing school at the University of Iowa, “I locked myself in my room and began writing ‘Black Book.’ I was not very social. I was 32. This was the first time I was out of Turkey in so many years. I was also socially shy –not like I am today. Each night there was a dinner invitation. And THAT would upset me – meeting so many people. I was very asocial in Iowa. (Pause). But I wrote very well.”

Though he loves and knows movies, he is not like one of his literary idols – William Faulkner – tempted to write for the movies.

“Even after he won the Nobel Prize, he was writing scripts for money ... He went to Hollywood and wrote that kitsch Hollywood Egyptian film [‘Land of the Pharaohs’ starring Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins]. I don’t want to do that.

“Do I need to do that? I never understood why Faulkner did it. Probably because Nobel money was not big enough then.”

The laugh on the other end of the phone is a huge, runaway guffaw.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Joint Call for Abolition of Article 301

11-09-2007
bianet

International PEN, Article 19 and IPA have called on Turkey to abolish the controversial Article 301.

IFEX/Article 19

International PEN, ARTICLE 19 and IPA have issued a joint press release, in which they describe a letter which was sent to new President Abdullah Gül:

"International PEN, ARTICLE 19 and the International Publishers Association call for the abolition of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code Today International PEN, ARTICLE 19 and the International Publishers Association issued an open letter to the newly-elected President of Turkey Abdullah Gül.

The letter calls for the abolition of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. In the letter the three organisations expressed their deep concern about the impact of Article 301 on the right to freedom of expression in Turkey and its inconsistency with international law.

Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code prohibits public denigration of "Turkishness", a term that is extremely vague and can be easily abused. It has been widely used to repress freedom of expression and open debate in the country. In particularly, the letter draws President Gül's attention to the fact that, between April and July 2007, there were 18 trials against 24 people under Article 301.

While welcoming progressive changes to Turkish legislation since mid-1990s, the letter also points to the fact that hopes that the Turkish government might consider the abolition of Article 301 faded away after the assassination of (editor of the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos) Hrant Dink in January 2007. Mr. Dink had himself been convicted under Article 301 and was handed down a six-month suspended sentence in October 2005.

Since his killing, Article 301 trials continue. The letter also makes reference to the joint declaration of 41 international and national NGOs urging the abolition of Article 301 from the Turkish Penal Code - as well as other provisions violating freedom of expression - issued on 14 February 2007; it further cites the resolution on the same issue adopted by ARTICLE 19, International PEN and the International Publishers Association on 24 November 2006. The letter urges President Gül to do all in his power to ensure Turkey's compliance with its obligations under international law, particularly through the abolition of Article 301." (Article 19/IFEX/AG)

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Taner Akcam filed application against Turkey to European Court of Human Rights

21.06.2007
PanARMENIAN.Net

"Dr. Akhavan. "Limitations on freedom of speech should apply to hate speech, not to speech against hate."

Professor Taner Akcam, a Turkish scholar and Visiting Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, filed an application before the European Court of Human Rights against the Republic of Turkey, independent French journalist Jean Eckian told PanARMENIAN.Net.

The complaint is based on the criminal investigation launched against him earlier this year under Turkish Penal Code Article 301, for “insulting Turkishness” by having publicly used the term "genocide" to describe the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.

Despite its changed wording over time, Article 301 remains prominent among the many enduring obstacles in Turkey’s path to membership of the European Union. The same law has in recent years been the basis for the prosecution of other leading Turkish intellectuals, writers, journalists and academics on similar grounds. The most notable victims of Article 301 include Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, recently assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, and publisher Fatih Tas.

The Court, based in Strasbourg, France, enforces the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It rules over private individuals’ complaints against human rights violations committed by signatory States. Turkey signed the Convention in 1954.

"Facing history and coming to terms with past human rights abuses is not a crime but a prerequisite for peace and reconciliation in the region," says Professor Akcam. "My goal is to help Turkey realize its full potential to evolve into a truly free and democratic society. This cannot happen if Turkey continues to criminalize academic discussion." His legal team is headed by Dr. Payam Akhavan, former UN war crimes prosecutor and professor of international law at McGill University in Montreal. "In a world where Holocaust denial is a crime, state-sanctioned denial of genocide is all the more reproachable," says Dr. Akhavan. "Limitations on freedom of speech should apply to hate speech, not to speech against hate."

The Court will examine Professor Akcam’s application and rule on its admissibility within one year. If the application is declared admissible, the Court will then encourage the parties to reach a friendly settlement. Only if no settlement can be reached will the Court consider whether or not there has been a violation of the Convention. Should the Court find that there has been such violation, it will deliver a judgment which will legally bind Turkey to comply.

! Reproduction in full or in part is prohibited without reference to «PanARMENIAN.Net».

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

In various legal actions against "Agos" newspaper staff, some acquitted, others still facing charges

IFEX, Canada - Jun 19, 2007
Country/Topic: Turkey
Date: 19 June 2007
Source: IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET)
Person(s): Serkis Seropyan, Arat Dink, Karin Karakasli, Aydın Engin
Target(s): editor(s) , journalist(s)
Type(s) of violation(s): acquitted , legal action
Urgency: Bulletin

(BIANET/IFEX) - Charges against the late editor-in-chief of "Agos" newspaper, Hrant Dink, of "degrading Turkishness" and "attempting to influence the judiciary" were dropped after he was murdered on 19 January 2007. However, on 14 June, prosecutor Mücahit Ercan demanded that Serkis Seropyan, the owner of "Agos", and the managing editor Arat Dink (Dink's son) be punished in the same case.

Ercan said, "We believe that the accused are degrading Turkishness by suggesting, contrary to historical truth and without proof, that a people were destroyed by Turks." He called for their punishment under articles 301 and 53.

The hearing, which took place in a penal court in Sisli, Istanbul, was observed by Halil Ibrahim Özcan, the Turkish PEN Imprisoned Writers' Committee president; Zeynep Taskin, a representative of the Heinrich Böll Foundation; and human rights activist Füsun Celiköz. The judge, Metin Aydin, closed the hearing to the public and the media.

In an interview with Reuters News Agency published on 21 July 2006, entitled "One Signature against 301", Hrant Dink had said that he believed that an "Armenian genocide" had happened. He said: "Of course I say that there was a genocide because the result speaks for itself. You can see that a people who lived on this soil for 4,000 years disappeared after those events."

Regarding his father's comments, Arat Dink stated that "I cannot deny myself, my history and my identity. These comments of mine have also made the front pages of Turkish newspapers before, but there was never a trial. That is because at the time there was no operation to 'show me my place'". Seropyan said, "If it were necessary to collect signatures against article 301 again, I would do it".

The defendants' lawyer, Fethiye Cetin, claimed that the trial was only continuing because her clients were newsworthy. She pleaded for their acquittal, citing the dismissal of historian Taner Akcam's case as a precedent.

Lawyer Erdal Dogan stated that the cases against the "Agos" representatives were indefensible in the light of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

In a separate case, Karin Karakasli, an "Agos" editor who received a suspended sentence of six months imprisonment for publishing a series of articles on "Armenian identity", was acquitted after the Supreme Court of Appeals ordered a retrial.

In yet another case, against "Agos" journalist Aydın Engin, as well as Seropyan and Arat Dink, concerning an article by Engin entitled "The judiciary needs to be disturbed", Dink and Seropyan were acquitted, but Engin still faces one charge of "insulting the panel of judges". On request of the defence, which had not taken part in the deliberations, the case was slated to continue on 18 July.

MORE INFORMATION:

For further information contact Nadire Mater at BIANET, Faikpasa Yokusu, No. 41, Antikhane, Kat: 3, D.8-9, Cukurcuma, Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey, tel: +90 212 251 1503, fax: +90 212 251 1609, e-mail: bia@bianet.org, Internet: http://www.bianet.org

** New case and update to IFEX alerts on the Arat Dink, Seropyan and Engin cases of 2 April 2007 and 6 July 2006**

OTHER RELEVANT ALERTS:PREVIOUS ALERT(S):

- Two more suspects in Dink murder arrested; "Agos" editors' charges still pending; publisher avoids court hearing for fear of safety
- Editor's trial adjourned until December as judicial harassment continues



Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

As in 1915 the Turkish Government Once Again Tries to Silence Armenians

June 19, 2007
Armenian National Committee of Canada
Comité National Arménien du Canada
130 Albert St., Suite/Bureau 1007
Ottawa, ON
KIP 5G4
Tel./Tél. (613) 235-2622 Fax/Téléc. (613) 238-2622
E-mail/courriel:national.office@anc-canada.com
www.anccanada.org
For Immediate Release
Contact: Kevork Manguelian

As in 1915 the Turkish Government Once Again Tries to Silence Armenians

Arat Dink Charged with “Denigrating the Turkish National Identity”

Ottawa--Arat Dink, the editor of Istanbul-based “Agos” weekly and the son of assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, and three of his colleagues at weekly have been charged with “denigrating Turkishness,” according to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

The three other journalists charged with Dink are Serkis Seropyan, Aydin Engin and Karin Karakashli. Dink's father was gunned down by a Turkish utranationalist outside the "Agos" offices on 19 January.

The Istanbul persecutor office has charged the “Agos” staff for publishing, on July 2006, an interview with the Reuters news agency, in which the late Hrant Dink had referred to the 1915 Armenian Genocide. The Dink’s family lawyer, Erdal Dogal, has also been charged.

During last Thursday's hearing the Turkish prosecutors called for a prison sentence of up to three years for Arat Dink. According to the Anatolia News Agency, Arat Dink accused judges of contributing to his father's death by making him a target, thanks to their high-profile judicial proceedings. Dink is reported to have also said: "I think it is primitive, absurd and dangerous to consider as an insult to Turkish identity the recognition of a historic event as a genocide."

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the decision to prosecute Dink and his colleagues. “Once again we have to denounce the use of article 301 of the criminal code, which is a threat to freedom of expression,” said Reporters Without Borders.

“We call on the Canadian Government and the international community to declare Turkey a pariah nation and to take serious measures to force Turkey to acknowledge its predecessors' crimes against humanity," said Aris Babikian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC). "Canada, the United Nations, the European Union, and other international organizations and fora should stop treating Turkey with kid gloves and should hold Turkey accountable.

“Furthermore, Article 301 is an impediment to freedom of expression. It is intended to silence dissidents who dare to challenge the official line of the Turkish Government on the Armenian Genocide. The civilized world can not become an accomplice to Genocide denial and in fomenting intolerance, hatred and xenophobia,” said Babikian.

The ANCC executive director concluded his comments by drawing to the attention of politicians, the media and the public that the charges against “Agos" journalists are a "clear manifestation that the Turkish Government is not sincere in its so-called offers of dialogue and reconciliation with the Armenian people. These political maneuverings are nothing more than public relations stunts and diversions to avoid addressing the real issue between the two nations.”

-30-

The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Canadian-Armenian grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances the concerns of the Canadian-Armenian community on a broad range of issues.

Regional Chapters/Sections régionales

Montréal – Laval – Ottawa – Toronto – Hamilton – Cambridge – St. Catharines – Windsor – Vancouver

Turkish historian cleared of charges for declaring 'genocide'

02 April 2007
The New Anatolian with wires / Ankara

An Istanbul court decided late in January not to pursue charges against a Turkish historian for declaring a "genocide" of Armenians had been committed during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, daily Radikal revealed over the weekend.

In an article in Agos, a Turkish-Armenian weekly, historian Taner Akcam had written, "The 1915-1917 deportations and massacres of Armenians constituted a genocide."

The complaint against Akcam was filed by Recep Akkus at the prosecutor's office of Istanbul's Eyup district. The charges against Akcam were under controversial Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 301 for insulting Turkishness, as well as various other articles for instigating a crime, praising a crime and criminals, and instigating public animosity and hatred.

The prosecutor's office said that such writing about an alleged genocide is covered by freedom of speech and thus it is not "insulting Turkishness." The Jan. 30 decision came just 12 days the assassination of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, Agos' editor in chief. Dink, too, had been facing charges for insulting Turkishness when he was murdered.

Radikal noted that the prosecutor of Istanbul's Sisli district filed a case against Dink after remarks in which he said, "Of course I say this is a genocide."

In another article titled "Hrant Dink, 301 and a criminal complaint," Akcam wrote, "I believe the 1915-1917 deportations and massacres of Armenians constituted a genocide. I reiterate this at every opportunity. I have written books, articles and even columns on this issue. If describing this as genocide is a crime, I commit this crime nearly every week."

Akcam's lawyer Erdal Dogan also underlined that the decision is late but important within the framework of freedom of speech.

Speaking to bianet, Dogan said "I wish our prosecutors had made similar decisions before Dink was murdered. It's sad that justice was remembered after the assassination of Dink."

Article 301 is a controversial article of the penal code which took taking effect in June 2005, introduced as part of a package of penal law reform in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkey's European Union membership, in order to bring Turkey up to EU standards. It makes it a crime to insult "Turkishness." Since this article became law, charges have been brought in more than 60 cases, some of which are high profile.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

The truth should be proclaimed loudly

17 March 2007
The Indepependent
By Robert Fisk

When has any publisher ever tried to avoid publicity for his book?

Stand by for a quotation to take your breath away. It's from a letter from my Istanbul publishers, who are chickening out of publishing the Turkish-language edition of my book The Great War for Civilisation. The reason, of course, is a chapter entitled "The First Holocaust", which records the genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, a crime against humanity that even Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara tried to hide by initially refusing to invite Armenian survivors to his Holocaust Day in London.

It is, I hasten to add, only one chapter in my book about the Middle East, but the fears of my Turkish friends were being expressed even before the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was so cruelly murdered outside his Istanbul office in January. And when you read the following, from their message to my London publishers HarperCollins, remember it is written by the citizen of a country that seriously wishes to enter the European Community. Since I do not speak Turkish, I am in no position to criticise the occasional lapses in Mr Osman's otherwise excellent English.

"We would like to denote that the political situation in Turkey concerning several issues such as Armenian and Kurdish Problems, Cyprus issue, European Union etc do not improve, conversely getting worser and worser due to the escalating nationalist upheaval that has reached its apex with the Nobel Prize of Orhan Pamuk and the political disagreements with the EU. Most probably, this political atmosphere will be effective until the coming presidency elections of April 2007... Therefore we would like to undertake the publication quietly, which means there will be no press campaign for Mr Fisk's book. Thus, our request from [for] Mr Fisk is to show his support to us if any trial [is] ... held against his book. We hope that Mr Fisk and HarperCollins can understand our reservations."

Well indeedydoody, I can. Here is a publisher in a country negotiating for EU membership for whom Armenian history, the Kurds, Cyprus (unmentioned in my book) - even Turkey's bid to join the EU, for heaven's sake - is reason enough to try to sneak my book out in silence. When in the history of bookselling, I ask myself, has any publisher tried to avoid publicity for his book? Well, I can give you an example. When Taner Akcam's magnificent A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility was first published in Turkish - it uses Ottoman Turkish state documents and contemporary Turkish statements to prove that the genocide was a terrifying historical fact - the Turkish historian experienced an almost identical reaction. His work was published "quietly" in Turkey - and without a single book review.

Now I'm not entirely unsympathetic with my Turkish publishers. It is one thing for me to rage and roar about their pusillanimity. But I live in Beirut, not in Istanbul. And after Hrant Dink's foul murder, I'm in no position to lecture my colleagues in Turkey to stand up to the racism that killed Dink. While I'm sipping my morning coffee on the Beirut Corniche, Mr Osman could be assaulted in the former capital of the Ottoman empire. But there's a problem nonetheless.

Some months earlier, my Turkish publishers said that their lawyers thought that the notorious Law 301 would be brought against them - it is used to punish writers for being "unTurkish" - in which case they wanted to know if I, as a foreigner (who cannot be charged under 301), would apply to the court to stand trial with them. I wrote that I would be honoured to stand in a Turkish court and talk about the genocide. Now, it seems, my Turkish publishers want to bring my book out like illicit pornography - but still have me standing with them in the dock if right-wing lawyers bring charges under 301!

I understand, as they write in their own letter, that they do not want to have to take political sides in the "nonsensical collision between nationalists and neo-liberals", but I fear that the roots of this problem go deeper than this. The sinister photograph of the Turkish police guards standing proudly next to Dink's alleged murderer after his arrest shows just what we are up against here. Yet still our own Western reporters won't come clean about the Ottoman empire's foul actions in 1915. When, for example, Reuters sent a reporter, Gareth Jones, off to the Turkish city of Trabzon - where Dink's supposed killer lived - he quoted the city's governor as saying that Dink's murder was related to "social problems linked to fast urbanisation". A "strong gun culture and the fiery character of the people" might be to blame.

Ho hum. I wonder why Reuters didn't mention a much more direct and terrible link between Trabzon and the Armenians. For in 1915, the Turkish authorities of the city herded thousands of Armenian women and children on to boats, set off into the Black Sea - the details are contained in an original Ottoman document unearthed by Akcam - "and thrown off to drown". Historians may like to know that the man in charge of these murder boats was called Niyazi Effendi. No doubt he had a "fiery character".

Yet still this denial goes on. The Associated Press this week ran a story from Ankara in which its reporter, Selcan Hacaoglu, repeated the same old mantra about there being a "bitter dispute" between Armenia and Turkey over the 1915 slaughter, in which Turkey "vehemently denies that the killings were genocide". When will the Associated Press wake up and cut this cowardly nonsense from its reports? Would the AP insert in all its references to the equally real and horrific murder of six million European Jews that right-wing Holocaust negationists "vehemently deny" that there was a genocide? No, they would not.

But real history will win. Last October, according to local newspaper reports, villagers of Kuru in eastern Turkey were digging a grave for one of their relatives when they came across a cave containing the skulls and bones of around 40 people - almost certainly the remains of 150 Armenians from the town of Oguz who were murdered in Kuru on 14 June 1915. The local Turkish gendarmerie turned up to examine the cave last year, sealed its entrance and ordered villagers not to speak of what they found. But there are hundreds of other Kurus in Turkey and their bones, too, will return to haunt us all. Publishing books "quietly" will not save us.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Turkish lawyer threatens to submit charges against Dutch official

16.03.2007

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz threatens to submit charges against Nebahat Albayrak, Secretary of State of the Dutch Justice Ministry. He warns the Secretary of State that she may not offend her native country. According to the nationalist lawyer best thing to do for Albayrak is to hand in her Turkish passport, because she is a member of a government that condemns the Armenian Genocide. Kerincsiz said so in the Dutch news program “Een Vandaag”. The threat of a charge coincides with the discussion in the Netherlands about the double nationality issue.

As PanARMENIAN.Net came to know from the Federation of Armenian Organizations of the Netherlands, beside Dutch nationality Secretary of State Albayrak has also a Turkish passport. In a response through her spokesman she said she will wait and see if she will be really charged.

In the past Kerincsiz has already started actions against Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated last January. In the case of Dink the charge led to a condemnation, while the Istanbul court cancelled the case against Pamuk under international pressure.

The lawyer calls upon the controversial article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code, which makes insult of the Turkish identity punishable. Albayrak being a member of Dutch Parliament in 2004 supported a motion, which called for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. That request was passed unanimously and was also taken over by the Dutch government.

! Reproduction in full or in part is prohibited without reference to «PanARMENIAN.Net».

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Turkish writers watch their backs

March 1, 2007

After an editor's killing, a nationalist resurgence
has chilled literary life.

By Laura King, Times Staff Writer

ISTANBUL, TURKEY — At a recent dinner party on the
shores of the Bosporus, the bookish chatter among the
Turkish writers and academics present took a sudden
grim turn: Are you under police protection yet?

"We were all comparing notes about which of us had
only one bodyguard and which of us had two, and we
joked a little about being in competition with each
other over this," said journalist and novelist Perihan
Magden, who was among those placed under police
protection after threats by ultranationalists. "It was
comical, but also very tragic."

In the wake of the January assassination in Istanbul
of prominent ethnic Armenian editor Hrant Dink,
Turkey's intellectual community is feeling under siege
to a degree not experienced in decades.

A mass outpouring of dismay and revulsion when Dink
was gunned down, illustrated by a funeral that drew
tens of thousands of mourners, has given way to a
powerful right-wing backlash. Shadowy nationalist
groups have issued chilling threats against authors
and thinkers who, like Dink, speak out against
Turkey's official denial that the mass killings of
Armenians beginning in 1915 constituted genocide, or
on the power of the Turkish military, or the status of
minority Kurds.

As a result, novelists are canceling book tours,
once-outspoken professors are maintaining a low
profile, and crusading columnists like Magden wonder
whether their words will wind up costing them their
lives.

The man who temporarily stepped in for Dink has been
afraid to put his name on the masthead of Agos, the
bilingual Armenian Turkish newspaper his slain
colleague edited.

"It's a real climate of fear," said Eugene Schoulgin,
a board member of the writers group PEN, which
together with other international organizations has
been lobbying for repeal of Article 301, a provision
in the Turkish penal code that makes it a criminal
offense to "denigrate Turkishness."

Many intellectuals had hoped that the brazen daylight
shooting of Dink, who received a suspended sentence of
six months in jail in 2005 over his views on the
slayings of Armenians, would prove a catalyst for
abolishing Article 301. Turkey's curbs on freedom of
expression are seen as a significant obstacle as the
government seeks to advance the country's bid for
membership in the European Union.

But amid the increasingly polarized atmosphere, many
observers have grown more pessimistic than ever about
prospects for reform. And in this election year,
Turkish political parties, even mainstream ones, are
reluctant to alienate voters with nationalist
leanings, who make up a substantial chunk of the
electorate.

Analysts point to Turkey's historical tendency to dig
in its heels in the face of reform pressures from the
outside world. They argue that the outcry over Article
301 is not only hardening domestic resistance but may
even be adding to an already profound ambivalence over
forging closer bonds with the West.

"Sometimes international groups create a reaction in
Turkey, an overreaction, because the language they use
is not always constructive," said Onur Oymen, an
opposition politician and former Turkish ambassador to
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "Critics
should be careful not to produce the opposite reaction
to that sought."

Police officials have not disclosed how many dissident
public figures have been placed under protection since
Dink's killing, but estimates range into the dozens,
including acclaimed fiction writer Elif Shafak, who
was taken to court last year under Article 301. Her
case, like most of the scores of similar prosecutions,
ended with the charges being dropped.

Shafak, who was a close friend of Dink, has sharply
curtailed appearances to promote her new novel, "The
Bastard of Istanbul," a family saga whose complex plot
line hinges on the Armenian killings. Now under police
protection, she wrote in an e-mail that she remained
"in mourning" and declined to be interviewed.

Shafak's husband, Eyup Can, told the Hurriyet
newspaper about the couple being shadowed by a police
guard whenever they ventured out. "He is inside your
life," he said.

Shafak was so distraught after Dink's slaying, he
said, that she was unable to breastfeed their baby.

"This is the situation of writers in this country
today," he said. "It is really bad."

Orhan Pamuk, the winner of last year's Nobel Prize in
literature and another writer to run afoul of Article
301, stood outside Dink's office hours after the Jan.
19 assassination and publicly declared that the editor
"was killed because of his ideas, ideas that aren't
acceptable to the state."

Pamuk, who has long been vilified on nationalist
websites, was subsequently singled out for a seeming
threat by Yasin Hayal, who police say has confessed to
helping orchestrate the Dink killing, including
recruiting the 17-year-old alleged gunman, Ogun
Samast.

"Orhan Pamuk, better be wise!" Hayal called out as he
was being taken into an Istanbul court in January. "Be
wise."

Pamuk has since canceled a series of readings and
other scheduled appearances in Germany and is now
staying in the United States.

His Turkish publisher declined to say whether Pamuk
had left the country because of safety concerns or was
honoring prior academic commitments. Fellow writers
said that the Nobel laureate was placed under tight
security after a flurry of threats and that when he
departed, police guards escorted him to the airport.

Many here say the intimidation of intellectuals brings
back vivid memories of the 1970s and '80s, when
political violence frightened many journalists and
academics into silence.

Police protection is of scant comfort to those who
believe the government is passively or actively
complicit in the threats against them.

After Dink's killing, allegations surfaced that police
had ignored explicit threats against him. And after
the arrest of the suspected gunman, TV footage leaked
out that showed the man striking triumphal poses with
arresting officers, who could be seen helping him
carefully position a Turkish flag for the cameras.
Investigations of both incidents are continuing.

Another former Article 301 defendant, Ankara
University political science professor Baskin Oran,
wrote about a months-long ordeal after he sought
police protection because of a series of threats that
arrived by text message, fax and e-mail. The messages
called him an "enemy of Turks" and a "dog," with one
vowing, "Turkish nationalists will cut you up one
day."

When the identities of some of those menacing him were
traced electronically, he said, a prosecutor summoned
him and put him face to face with the authors of the
threats, urging that he listen to their grievances.
Oran said he was frightened and furious at the
suggestion, which he refused.

Prosecutors launch probe into Dink funeral slogans

23.02.2007
Today’s Zaman İstanbul

This story is quite remarkable, if the prosecution goes ahead it will tarnish Turkey's reputation further in the world opinion.

The prosecutor's office for Istanbul's Şişli district has launched an investigation into Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül and the committee that organized the funeral for journalist Hrant Dink, the slain editor of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, for the slogans "We are all Armenian; We are all Hrant Dink," according to a report from Milliyet daily.

The slogans were printed on posters and chanted by marchers during Dink's funeral procession through downtown Istanbul. Last month, hundreds of thousands of Turks poured into the streets of Istanbul after Hrant Dink's murder, many chanting, "We are all Hrant Dink; We are all Armenian," in an unprecedented display of solidarity. The slogans angered ultranationalist circles and drew criticism from even moderately nationalistic groups.

A reporter for a local daily in the northern city of Sinop, Mete Çağdaş, filed a complaint to the local prosecutor's office in Sinop. Çağdaş's application accused Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül and the funeral organizers of turning the atmosphere at the funeral into one for a fallen "militant," a term used subjectively in this case to discredit the legitimacy of the protests.

The application read: "Those in the procession chanted, 'We are all Hrant; We are all Armenian,' and carried banners with the same expressions. Is this not racism?"
Çağdaş's complaint also claimed that the slogan "Murderer 301," suggesting that anti-free speech penal code Article 301 under which Dink had been tried and convicted was a major factor behind the killing, was itself an insult to the Turkish Penal Code, which in turn was a violation of the law. Mayor Sarıgül and the organizers were also blamed for not having unfurled any flags of the Republic of Turkey, the complaint file noted.

According to Milliyet's report, the chief prosecutor's office in Sinop had no jurisdiction in the case and relayed the file to the Şişli chief prosecutor's office in late January. Şişli prosecutors launched an investigation which might end up in a law suit against the organizers or in dismissal. In either case, the Şişli office will have to make a statement clarifying its opinion of the funeral slogans.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suspected killer of Dink hospitalised

The suspected murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was hospitalised overnight and underwent surgery for appendicitis, doctors said Thursday.
Ogün Samast was taken to hospital under heavy security measures, the agency said.
Samast, 17, is in good shape after the operation in a state hospital in the northwestern city of Izmit and is expected to be discharged at the weekend, chief physician Şenol Ergüney told Anatolia news agency.

The suspect, who has confessed to shooting Dink outside the Istanbul office of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos on January 19, had been incarcerated in a maximum security prison in the nearby town of Kandira, about 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Istanbul.

Seven other people have been jailed for involvement in the murder, believed to have been committed with ultra-nationalist motives.

The 52-year-old Dink, a leading member of Turkey's tiny Armenian community, called the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire genocide, a label that Ankara's official line on the massacres fiercely rejects.


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.