JOURNALIST TO BE TRIED FOR "DEGRADING STATE"

IFEX, Canada
International Freedom of Expression eXpress
4439/
June 27 2007

Country/Topic: Turkey
Date: 27 June 2007
Source: IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET)
Person(s): Haci Bogatekin
Target(s): journalist(s)
Type(s) of violation(s): legal action
Urgency: Threat

(BIANET/IFEX) – A case in the district town of Gerger, in the province
of Adiyaman, southeast of Turkey, illustrates how the Turkish
government has been indecisive and contradictory in dealing with
freedom of expression.

Public Prosecutor Sadullah Ovacikli dismissed a case against journalist
Haci Bogatekin, who wrote an article about a flea epidemic, in which
he criticised the government. The article, entitled "Flea, Pig and
Agha", was published in a local newspaper on 7 December 2006.

Ovacikli had cited the "Observer-Guardian" versus United Kingdom and
the "Prager-Oberschlick" versus Austria cases, which had been taken
to the European Court of Human Rights, as precedents for his decision.

However, three months after the dismissal, the same prosecutor’s
office started a trial against the same journalist over a similar case,
citing Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

In an unsigned article published on 10 March 2007, entitled "Turkey
Has Made a Mistake", Bogatekin said: "The government has made a
mistake. Where and when? Yesterday, in the East and Southeast. And
then in Istanbul. In Maras, in Sivas. Today, in Trabzohn, Istanbul,
Mersin and the Southeast . . . "

The journalist is now on trial for "degrading the state". The court
case will begin on 25 July at a penal court in Gerger.

Bogatekin said in a 3 April statement to the prosecution: "I did not
write the article with criminal intent. As a journalist, I tried to
criticise some of the mistakes the government made in the past and
recently." However, his statement did not prevent him from being
prosecuted.

Bogatekin argued that he had presented his thoughts in order to
show that the repetition of mistakes would blight the future of the
country. In his article, he held the government responsible for "the
death of millions of Armenians and Syriac Christians in the East and
Southeast, after that the death of the Alevi in Dersim, then the Greek
Orthodox in Istanbul with the September movement, and more recently
the death of hundreds of people in Maras, Malatya, Corum and Sivas".

In the previous case against Bogatekin, related to the article in
which he had also criticised the government’s hygiene standards,
the prosecution dismissed proceedings, arguing that "although freedom
of expression was exaggerated to a certain extent, the article even
containing some provocations, and some of the expressions used were
polemical in nature, the expressions were used to support an objective
statement, and they are not considered an unfounded personal attack".