TURKEY DROPS PROBE INTO ARMENIAN APOLOGY CAMPAIGN: REPORT

Agence France Presse — English
January 26, 2009 Monday 11:05 AM GMT

A Turkish prosecutor has dropped a probe into a campaign to apologise
for the Ottoman mass killings of Armenians, citing laws protecting
freedom of speech, the Anatolia news agency reported Monday.

The prosecutor decided there was no ground to bring charges over
the petition because "in democratic societies opponent opinions are
protected within the scope of freedom of expression," Anatolia said.

The probe was launched earlier this month after several Ankara
residents filed a complaint asking for the organisers and signatories
of an Internet petition apologising for the deaths to be punished for
"openly denigrating the Turkish nation", an offence that carries two
years in prison.

The petition, posted online on December 15, states that the signatory
"does not accept… the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the
Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915." It ends with an offer
of apologies.

The text, which refrains from using the term "genocide" to describe
the massacres, has been signed by more than 28,000 people, among them
intellectuals and artists.

Backed by several countries, Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their
people were massacred during World War I under the Ottoman Empire
and term the killings as genocide.

Turkey rejects the label of genocide and argues that 300,000-500,000
Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
with invading Russian troops.