OSCE: CONVICTION OF HRANT DINK’S SON FOR "INSULTING TURKISHNESS" MORE PROOF ARTICLE 301 MUST BE ABOLISHED
armradio.am
19.10.2007 13:27
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.
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.