TURKISH GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS POLICE INTELLIGENCE CHIEF IN ISTANBUL

The Associated Press
International Herald Tribune, France
Feb 5 2007

ANKARA, Turkey: Turkey’s government on Monday suspended the police
intelligence chief of Istanbul as part of an investigation into the
killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist in the city last month,
the state-owned Anatolia news agency reported.

The suspension of intelligence chief Ahmet Ilhan Guler, announced
by Interior Ministry officials, the agency said, follows the Jan. 19
killing of Hrant Dink. The 52-year-old journalist had angered Turkish
nationalists with repeated assertions that the mass killings of
Armenians around the time of World War I was genocide.

More than 100,000 people marched at Dink’s funeral, many of them
chanting for Turkey to abolish a repressive article in the penal code
used against many intellectuals, including Dink, who spoke openly on
controversial topics.

It is a crime to insult Turkey or the Turkish national character.