Trial unnerves Turkey’s Armenians
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Istanbul
2007/10/12
A court in Istanbul has found two Turkish-Armenian journalists guilty
of "insulting Turkishness" for reprinting an interview that referred
to the mass killing of Ottoman Armenians by Turks in 1915 as genocide.
The ruling came one day after the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US
Congress approved a resolution that recognises the killings as
genocide, infuriating Ankara, which denies any such thing.
"I think this is the retaliation of the judiciary to that decision of
Congress," says Ozlem Dalkiran, who followed the trial for the
Helsinki Citizens Assembly, a European human rights group.
"It’s a judicial scandal," she says.
The newspaper journalists were prosecuted under the now notorious
Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code for publishing comments made by
their then-editor, Hrant Dink, in an interview with the Reuters news
agency last summer.
Hrant Dink was an outspoken critic of state policy here on the events
of 1915, a rare voice in Turkey’s small ethnic Armenian community.
In January he was shot and killed outside the office of his newspaper,
Agos. A teenage nationalist gunman is on trial for murder along with
his alleged accomplices.
‘Dangerous decision’
One of the journalists convicted of insult on Thursday is Hrant Dink’s
son, Arat. The other is Agos newspaper colleague Sarkis Seropyan.
Hrant Dink himself had been tried and convicted of insulting
Turkishness in another article on the Armenian issue before he was
killed.
"The fact Hrant was prosecuted under Article 301 was an important
factor in his assassination. That way, the prosecution singled him out
as a target," Agos journalist Markar Esayan underlined shortly after
the latest court ruling on Thursday.
"This latest verdict of insulting Turkishness is a very serious
accusation which may have very serious consequences. This court
decision puts lives in danger."
The European Union has long called for the controversial insult law to
be changed or repealed.
Article 301 shot to international attention when it was used to bring
charges against the author and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, again for
his comments on the fate of the Armenians.
"This new conviction is a particularly distressing and alarming
verdict. It demonstrates once again the serious nature of Article
301," says Emma Sinclair-Webb of Amnesty International.
"It shows its implementation is still very problematic," she says.
She argues the law must be abolished.
"There also seems to be a pattern that this law is used against
particular groups, Armenian or Kurdish. If so, that is extremely
alarming," she says.
Frightened into silence
Other newspapers in Turkey reprinted Hrant Dink’s comments. Only
Turkish-Armenian Agos was prosecuted.
Just last week, President Abdullah Gul suggested changes to A301 were
a possibility. But the Turkish government has shown no sign it is in
any hurry.
A nationalist backlash against the US Congress resolution on genocide
is likely to stall things even longer.
That debate in America has also affected Turkey’s ethnic Armenian community.
Many people were frightened into silence by the murder of Hrant Dink.
Now they are even more withdrawn.
"If this bill passes it will have an impact on us. But we are already
facing problems," says one ethnic Armenian.
"Someone threw a sound bomb into a schoolyard recently. People in all
neighbourhoods here are now courageous enough to do such things."
Published: 2007/10/12 09:47:15 GMT
(c) BBC MMVII
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