TURKISH COURT DROPS CHARGES AGAINST 4 JOURNALISTS; PROCEEDS WITH TRIAL OF FIFTH

AP Worldstream
Apr 11, 2006

A court on Tuesday dropped charges against four Turkish journalists
accused of insulting the country’s courts, but decided to press ahead
with the trial of a fifth journalist, a report said.

All five journalists were standing trial for criticizing in print a
court’s decision last year to shut down a conference in Istanbul about
the mass killings of Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman Empire.

Prosecutors said their writings were illegal attempts to influence
the outcome of a trial and insulted the court system.

On Tuesday, the court dropped charges against journalists Hasan
Cemal, Ismet Berkan, Haluk Sahin and Erol Katircioglu, on grounds that
prosecutors had not filed charges within the required two-month period
following the publication of the articles, the state-run Anatolia
news agency reported.

The court, however, decided to proceeded with the trial of Murat Belge,
a columnist for the liberal Radikal newspaper, the agency said.

The trial is seen as a test of Turkey’s readiness for membership in the
European Union. Turkey, which embarked on membership talks in October,
is under heavy pressure from the EU and human rights organizations
to address its infringements on freedom of expression.

The five had faced between six months to 10 years in prison. Charges
on the grounds of insulting the republic, state institutions or
“Turkishness” are frequently leveled against journalists, scholars
and dissidents.

The discussion of what happened to Armenians in Turkey between around
1915 and 1923 is extremely sensitive in Turkey, which vehemently
denies that mass killings and deportations of the then-sizeable
Armenian minority constituted an organized genocide.

The conference in September went on despite the court order to close
it down after organizers changed the venue at the last minute. It
was the first time the issue was publicly discussed in Turkey.

A case against Orhan Pamuk, the country’s best-known novelist, for
“insulting Turkishness,” was dropped earlier this year after Turkey
came under harsh criticism from the EU.