Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 10 2009

Prosecutors prompted to begin probe into apology campaign

The Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation
into a campaign initiated by a number of Turkish intellectuals who
have been collecting signatures for a statement personally apologizing
for events that took place in 1915 that Armenians claim constituted
genocide.

According to the Anatolia news agency, six Ankara residents — Hasan
Hüseyin Satır, Sabahat Ã-zgür, Mehmet
Ä°nal Kolburan, Hüseyin ErdoÄ?an, Serdar Orhaner
and KürÅ?at Karacabey — submitted a petition for
criminal prosecution of the campaign organizers and the people who
added their signatures to the campaign. They based their argument on
the grounds established by the Turkish Penal Code’s (TCK) infamous
Article 301, which has been used to prosecute several intellectuals,
journalists and activists for `insulting Turkishness.’ Submitted
yesterday, the petition quoted the statement made in the apology
campaign: `My conscience does not accept the insensitivity shown to
and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that Ottoman Armenians were
subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice, and for my part, I
empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I
apologize to them.’ The petition made to the prosecutor’s office also
stated that `those so-called intellectuals close their eyes and
conscience to the fact that in the same time period Armenian gangs,
with the cooperation of the imperialist occupiers, savagely killed
hundreds of thousands of Turkish people, and the phenomenon that they
mention is the phenomenon the Armenian claims of genocide are based
on.’ Calling the `so-called genocide claims’ baseless — which they
described as also being the stance of the Turkish state — they
further said the `so-called intellectuals describe the state policy as
`denial’ and declare that they do not approve of it, so they accuse
the Turkish nation of `committing genocide’,’ and as such, they are
`degrading the Turkish nation.’

The prosecutor’s office started an investigation into the issue; the
organizers of the Internet campaign will be asked to testify and the
Web site will be investigated, Anatolia
noted. The apology campaign collected close to 27,000 signatures on
the Internet since it was started in December of last year.

10 January 2009, Saturday
TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH WIRES Ä°STANBUL

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress