‘JUDICIARY OBSTRUCTS DEMOCRATIZATION IN TURKEY’
By Cihan News Agency

Zaman, Turkey
Sept 27 2005

zaman.com

A recent conference on Armenians during the decline of the Ottoman
Empire in Turkey did not attract the expected level of attention from
the European media.

Despite recent reforms that have been made in line with plans to
become a member of the European Union (EU), Turkey’s judicial system
was “riddled with loopholes” the British newspaper The Financial
Times commented.

German Suddeutsche only reported that the conference location was
changed at the last moment and that the “taboos” were gradually
disappearing.

As for the cancellation of the conference on Armenians, The
Financial Times said, “Nobody yet knows whether the progressives
or the reactionaries have won the battle over free speech that has
raged in Turkey for the past few days. One thing is clear, however:
despite years of reforms, the country’s justice system is riddled
with loopholes.”

Commenting on Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who will appear in court
because due to his remarks on Armenians and Kurds to a Swiss newspaper,
the Financial Times noted:

“The two incidents suggest how the criminal justice and judicial
systems steeped in decades of nationalist ideology, reinforced by
an authoritarian constitution, can betray a reforming government’s
best intentions.”

The Guardian said, “The European commission accused the Turkish
judiciary of “provocation” on Friday, after an Istanbul court prevented
the conference from opening.”

Ankara’s opponents in the EU would have been strengthened if the ban
over the conference had succeeded, The Guardian wrote.

German newspaper Die Welt assessed that the conference would be
boring news if organized in another country, but it caused a scandal
in Turkey.

Turkey was absolutely against the so-called genocide thesis the
newspaper continued, and that the government had launched a campaign
to refute this opinion.

Die Welt claimed that mentioning the so-called Armenian genocide was
a crime in Turkey. The conference, asserted in Die Welt, passed in a
peaceful atmosphere and that none of the historians attending dared
to utter the word “genocide” during their presentations.