Reuters reports that Turkey will finally consider amending Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code which has long been considered an obstacle to democratization and freedom of speech in the country. In particular, the article which makes “insulting Turkishness” a crime, has been used to prosecute Turkish intellectuals, activists and writers such as Orhan Pamuk as well as Turkish citizens of ethnic Armenian or Kurdish extraction such as Hrant Dink.

Indeed, many pro-democracy and freedom of speech activists consider that Article 301 was indirectly responsible for Dink’s murder in Istanbul earlier this year. Anyway, Reuters says that the amending the article is not guaranteed, but with growing pressure from both inside and outside Turkey to do so, let’s hope it is.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is preparing to amend a controversial law on freedom of speech that has been criticized repeatedly by the European Union and could slow EU accession talks with Brussels.

The justice ministry will hand the draft amendment to article 301 of the penal code, which makes it an offence to “insult Turkishness,” to the cabinet within 15 days, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin told reporters on Tuesday.

It was not clear when the cabinet would approve the amendment.

Article 301 has been used to prosecute Turkish writers and thinkers, notably for comments on the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 under the Ottoman Empire.

Two years ago the government tried Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk under article 301 for his remarks on the events of 1915-16, but he was acquitted on a legal technicality.

The European Commission’s annual progress report on Turkey, published in November, called on Ankara to make “significant further efforts” on freedom of expression and religion, and noted that more people had been prosecuted under article 301 last year than in 2005.

[…]

Critics say Turkey’s centre-right government is dragging its feet, fearing that amending the law could spark a nationalist backlash at a time when EU membership is becoming less popular among Turks.

EU officials said the law was poisoning Turkey’s relations with Armenia and weighing on the media and non-government organizations in Turkey.

RFE/RL carries a report by AFP that Hrant Dink, the ethnic Armenian editor of the Agos newspaper in Turkey who was murdered in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this year has been named as one of its World Press Freedom Heroes by the International Press Institute.

“Hrant Dink’s nomination as our 52nd World Press Freedom Hero is a tribute to his bravery, but also an acknowledgement of his significant contribution to freedom of expression and press freedom in Turkey,” IPI Director Johann P. Fritz said.

Dink, a well-known Turkish-Armenian editor and columnist, was murdered in Istanbul on 19 January 2007. He had received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists who viewed his journalism as treacherous.

Dink was shot twice in the head and once in the neck by a Turkish nationalist outside the offices of the newspaper he founded in 1996. He had faced legal problems for denigrating “Turkishness” under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code in his articles about the massacre of Armenians during the First World War. In July 2006, he lost an appeal over a suspended six-month prison sentence handed down for violating Article 301. His prosecution stemmed from an article in 2004 about the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. Aside from this criminal case, Dink was also facing prosecution for a second article condemning his conviction.

Born on 15 September 1954, Dink was best-known for reporting on human and minority rights in Turkey and for advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. In a February 2006 interview, he said he hoped his reporting would pave the way for peace between the two peoples. “I want to write and ask how we can change this historical conflict into peace,” he said.

[…]

The IPI award was formally handed over to his widow, Rakel Dink, on 10 December in Vienna. “The murder of Hrant Dink deprived Turkey of one of its most courageous and independent voices and it was a terrible event for Turkish press freedom in general,” Fritz said. “Hrant Dink is one of at least 91 journalists murdered so far in 2007. In most cases, these murders occurred with impunity. We call on governments around the world to ensure that those responsible for these heinous crimes are brought to justice.”

Via Unzipped, an online petition has been posted which calls upon the international community to intervene in Georgia following yesterday’s clash in central Tbilisi. It also requests the release of political prisoners, the lifting of the state of emergency as well as an end to restrictions on the media and the persecution of opposition supporters. The petition is here.

Citing a post by local Armenian blogger Kornelij Glas, Artmika at Unzipped: Gay Armenia says the BBC is reporting that a rally due to be staged in Tbilisi, capital of the neighbouring Republic of Georgia, on 29 July to promote minority rights has been canceled. The problem appears to be that the Council of Europe’s All Different All Equal procession would have included members of Georgia’s gay and lesbian community.

An event promoting tolerance and cultural dialogue in Georgia has been cancelled, after rumours spread that it was in fact a gay parade.

The highly influential head of the Georgian Orthodox church spoke out against the event.

Organisers told the BBC they feared that the participants could have been attacked if it went ahead.

Gays have come under attack in former Soviet republics, with the Orthodox Church one of their main critics.

Since false rumours spread that the planned event was a demonstration for homosexual rights, the organisers say they have received large numbers of abusive telephone calls and emails, some making threats of physical violence.

[…]

The head of the Georgian Orthodox church had also warned that any rally involving sexual minorities would cause widespread offence and possibly lead to physical confrontation.

Georgia is a highly religious country which prides itself on its traditional Christian values.

Although homosexuality is legal, it is widely regarded as immoral. Gay rights activists in Georgia say homosexuals are often the targets for abuse and physical violence.

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Hot on the trial of a previous post which outlined Freedom House’s concerns about tendencies to limit media freedom in Russia and the CIS comes news that Armenia is following a path already being followed in other republics where media freedom and levels of democracy had been worse than here.

According to RFE/RL, a new bill aimed at restricting foreign broadcasting appears to be targeted specifically at them.

The National Assembly is due debate on Thursday government bills that could end the Armenian-language broadcasts of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a key source of information for a considerable part of Armenia’s population.

The two bills sent to the parliament late on Tuesday were swiftly condemned by local media rights groups and top opposition leaders as an attempt to muzzle what they regard as the only electronic media outlet not controlled by the administration of President Robert Kocharian.

[…]

The opposition minority in the parliament was quick to condemn the bills, with Raffi Hovannisian, leader of the Zharangutyun (Heritage) party, saying that he fears that they are a prelude to ending RFE/RL broadcasts in Armenia.

“The prime minister and the government must be mindful of the goals and consequences of their legislative initiatives,” said Hovannisian. “Zharangutyun will vote against them. We consider this a blow to the interests of the Republic of Armenia and the rights of our citizens.”

The condemnation was echoed by virtually all other major opposition groups not represented in the recently elected legislature. “Radio Liberty is the only free broadcaster operating in Armenia,” said Vazgen Manukian of the National Democratic Union. “Shutting it down would mean shutting down Armenia. This would be the greatest disgrace of recent years.”

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While most of us were focusing on last week’s parliamentary election, another event occurred that shouldn’t have paled into insignificance in comparison. On Saturday 12 May, 30-year-old Levon Gulyan died under mysterious circumstances in police custody. The authorities claim that Gulyan died while attempting escape from police custody, but human rights activists and his family suspect that he died during interrogation at the hands of police.

While it has long been reported by international human rights organizations that the police here rely on torture and physical abuse to extract confessions from suspects, Gulyan’s death is even more serious given that he was merely a witness to a deadly shooting that occurred outside his restaurant a few days earlier.

RFE/RL reported the news.

“They probably hit him in the head with something and he died,” Ghulian’s uncle, Toros Papazian, told RFE/RL. “They just don’t want to admit that he died in a police office.”

Papazian said his nephew’s body bore traces of violence such as a broken rib and thigh bone and bruises on his heels. “Levon was accidentally tortured to death before being thrown out of the window,” he said.

Ghulian was the owner of a restaurant in Yerevan’s southern Shengavit district near which a man was shot dead on May 9 in a reported dispute between two groups of unknown individuals. He was first detained and questioned at Shengavit’s police department.

“They were forcing Levon to name the murderer,” Papazian said. “He didn’t know that, but they kept beating him.”

Papazian added that Ghulian was for days repeatedly interrogated by the Shengavit police and prosecutors before being taken to the national Police Service’s Directorate General of Criminal Investigations on Saturday. He said the deputy chief of the department, Hovik Tamamian, personally drove him to his office.

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Although the Constitutional Court ruled last April that the eviction of tenants from their homes in central Yerevan to make way for arguably the largest land grab in Yerevan’s history was unconstitutional, nothing much has changed. Indeed, while ruling in their favor, the Constitutional Court was careful enough to word their decision so vaguely as to allow for further evictions and to prevent the true worth of the land their homes once stood on from being paid out.

The Constitutional Court ruled that a 2002 government decision that paved the way for the ongoing massive redevelopment in the city center violated several articles of Armenia’s constitution.

[…]

The verdict deals a serious blow to the credibility of the Armenian government which has insisted all along that large-scale construction which is rapidly changing central Yerevan is legal and fair.

Hundreds of local residents have been forced to vacate their mostly decrepit houses over the past two years. Many of them are unhappy with the amount of compensation paid to them by the state, saying that it was set well below the market value of their properties as a result of government corruption. Some have resisted eviction orders with hunger strikes and other extreme methods of struggle.

[…]

The court decision seems to be a largely moral victory for the disgruntled evicted residents as it is unlikely to entail any practical consequences. The court only ordered the Armenian government and parliament to bring the relevant legislation into conformity with the constitution and said nothing about property restitution or compensation.

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A1 Plus reports that a court has ruled that Lebanon-born ex-Karabakh Commander, Zhirayr Sefilyan, and his local counterpart, Vardan Malkhasyan, can be held for another two months in pre-trial detention.

The Court of the First Instance of Kentron and Norq-Marash communities has decided to prolong the period of imprisonment of Vardan Malkhasyan and Zhirayr Sefilyan for two more months.

The prisoners have announced that they will appeal the court decision.

Leading members of “Armenian Volunteers’ Movement” Zhirayr Sefilyan and Vardan Malkhasyan were arrested on December 10 of the previous year for making calls to change the Constitution by force.

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Riot Police on sidelines of pro-human rights demonstration, Istanbul, Republic of Turkey © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1997

A1 Plus carries news that the Head of the Istanbul Police has been dismissed from his position. Too little too late, some might say, but it’s worth remembering that these things should happen in such cases. Indeed, it is as much about how the authorities react after Dink’s murder that will determine whether there is the political will to truly democratize and address significant problems within Turkish society.

Theoretically, this should serve as an example and a warning to avoid similar incidents and tragedies in the future. Famous last words.

Ahmed Ilhan Gyuler, head of the Istanbul police department, was dismissed from work. He is accused of not preventing Hrant Dink’s assassination and not informing the officials about the warning.

To note, in 2006 the Istanbul police forces were warned about the upcoming attack on Dink’s life.

Of course, the real test is with regards to Article 301, but rather than amend it, I think it’s clear it has to be repealed. Cynics argue that another law or article will simple repace it, but something has to happen even if it means removing the gag on thousands of potential disidents on a whole range of issues raising from the Kurdish and Armenian Questions to the role of the National Security Council (MGK) in the governance of the country.

Incidently, just found the home page of the Turkish Police Academy here. Not directly related to this news, but interesting nonetheless. The English version is available here.

Hrant Dink Memorial, Liberty Square, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Just when you thought media attention on Turkey in the aftermath of Hrant Dink’s murder in Istanbul might be dissipating, iArarat reports a new scandal brewing over the death of the ethnic Armenian journalist and newspaper editor. Quoting a Turkish newspaper report, Artyom highlights reports that members of Turkey’s police force posed for photographs with Ogün Samast, Dink’s murderer.

After Ogün Samast, the triggerman of the murder of Agos newspaper editor-in-chief Hrant Dink was arrested, his photograph in front of Turkish flag became the issue of debate. The photograph was discussed as much as the murder itself. The place where the photograph was taken was discussed for days and the ministry of internal affairs and gendarmerie assigned auditors, who could not detect the place in the photograph. Then the camera footage of the photograph revealed that it was taken at the gendarmerie police station in Samsun bus station. After Samast was arrested; checked and his hands were handcuffed, the officers beside him took the photograph and the camera footage instead of taking him to the police department.

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Demonstration in support of Zhirayr Sefilyan and Vardan Malkhasyan, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Via Groong, Noyan Tapan carries news of yesterday’s demonstration staged in support of Lebanese-Armenian former Karabakh commander Zhirayr Sefilyan and his local colleague, Vardan Malkhasyan. The two men were arrested in December by agents of the National Security Service (NSS) and accused of planning a coup d’etat.

Their supporters, however, believe that the charges are unfounded and allege that the arrests mark the start of crackdowns on opposition supporters in the run-up to the May parliamentary election.

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 2, NOYAN TAPAN. “The main goal of the “Armenian Volunteers’ Unity” public initiative is to prevent the reproduction of the present immoral, illegal and anti-national regime.” Samvel Haroutiunian, a member of the initiative made such a statement during the February 2 demonstration of complaint organized in defence of Zhirayr Sefilian, the organization coordinator, commander of the Shoushi special battalion, and Vardan Malkhasian, a member of the “Hayrenik u Pativ” (Fatherland and Honour) party political council.

As Zh.Sefilian’s brother, Toros Sefilian mentioned in the interview with journalists, the reason for the “Armenian Volunteers’ Unity” coordinator’s arrest are the coming parliamentary elections, control of holding of which Zh.Sefilian intended to organize to stop their falsification as much as possible.

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