TURKEY BRINGS ANOTHER CASE AGAINST AN ETHNIC ARMEN

[Agitator]

TURKEY BRINGS ANOTHER CASE AGAINST AN ETHNIC ARMENIAN

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 26. ARMINFO. A Turkish court has opened a case

against an Armenian-Turkish journalist for his comments on a six-month

sentence it gave him earlier for denigrating Turkish identity, lawyers

involved in bringing the case said Sunday. The Istanbul court was

acting after a group of nationalist lawyers asked the court to file

a case against Hrant Dink, editor in chief of the bilingual Turkish

and Armenian weekly Agos, and three Agos journalists, saying that

the journalists "tried to influence the judiciary" through their

editorials.

Reuters reports, Mr. Dink, an Armenian who was born in Turkey,

was sentenced to six months in jail by an Istanbul court in October

for comments in an article he wrote against Article 301 of a revised

penal code, which allows prosecutors to pursue cases against writers

and scholars for "insulting Turkish identity."

The case is now before the Court of Appeals, one of several such

freedom of speech cases that have highlighted European Union concerns

about Turkey's efforts to become a member. European officials say

that such court cases are likely to hinder Turkey's progress toward

full membership.

About 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in 1915

during World War I. While historians are widely agreed that the 1915

massacres constituted genocide, the subject remains taboo in Turkey,

which says the killings were related to World War I clashes after

Armenian militants joined forces with Russia.

The nationalist Lawyers Unity Association asked the court to bring

the case against the four journalists, who face jail terms of nine

months to 4? years, if convicted.

"The case has been opened because Dink and the other writers of

the Armenian Agos publication have criticized a former sentence of

the court in an effort to prevent a just lawsuit, which is against

Article 288 of the code," said the leader of the association, Kemal

Kerincsiz. Mr. Dink told the Anka news agency that it was his right

to criticize the earlier verdict, adding he would take the case to

the European Court of Human Rights if the Court of Appeals upholds

the court ruling.

Orhan Pamuk, a best-selling Turkish novelist, is also facing a jail

term of six months to three years from the same court for violating

Article 301 for his comments in February to a Swiss magazine on

the 1915 killings and on the deaths of Kurds in last two decades in

Turkey. The case against Mr. Pamuk was filed at the request of the

same lawyers group.

Last Thursday, the Istanbul court fined a writer for breaching

Article 301 in a book on the evacuation of Kurdish, Armenian and

Syriac Christian villages in the past 100 years, and a publisher for

an article on Turkey's Iraq policy.