ARMENPRESS
OSCE REPRESENTATIVE CALLS ON TURKISH PRIME MINISTER TO
SCRAP ARTICLE 301
VIENNA, OCTOBER 19, ARMENPRESS: The OSCE
Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos
Haraszti, has called on Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan to urgently repeal Article 301 of
Turkey’s Penal Code, which makes it an offence to
"insult Turkish identity" and which continues to
target journalists with dissenting views on history.
The OSCE press office said Haraszti’s wrote to the
Prime Minister following the suspended one-year jail
sentence on 11 October of Arat Dink and Serkis
Seropyan, the editor-in-chief and owner of the
Armenian-Turkish language weekly Agos.
The two were convicted for reprinting remarks made
by murdered journalist Hrant Dink, the father of Arat,
in which he referred to the 1915 killings of Armenians
as "genocide", a term contested by the Turkish
authorities.
"This case proves that Article 301 is still being
used to prosecute journalists for discussing issues of
obvious public interest," said Haraszti in the letter.
"The failure to abolish this provision potentially
exposes dissenters to prosecution and violence."
Hrant Dink, a prominent Armenian-Turkish
journalist, was shot outside his Istanbul office in
January 2007. He was appealing against a prior
conviction under Article 301 at the time, and was
co-defendant in the now adjudicated case.
"I have commended the swift action Turkish law
enforcement authorities took after the murder of Hrant
Dink. Another important contribution to avoiding
similar crimes would be to repeal Article 301, which
depicts unconventional thinkers as enemies of
‘Turkishness’, and turns them into an object of hatred
in the eyes of fanatics and extremists," said
Haraszti.