Murdered Dinks Thoughts on Trial

Although the editor-in-chief of "Agos" newspaper, Hrant Dink, was murdered on 19 January of this year and the charges against him of "degrading Turkishness" and "attempting to influence the judiciary" ahd been dropped after his death, four representatives and writers from the "Agos" newspaper are still on trial. They faced a hearing today (14 June).

At a penal court in Sisli, Istanbul, the trial was observed by Halil Ibrahim Özcan, the Turkish PEN Imprisoned Writers' Committee President, Zeynep Taskin, a representative of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and human rights activist Füsun Celiköz. The judge Metin Aydin had closed the hearing to the public and the media.

Interview with Reuters News Agency

In an interview with Reuters News Agency published on 21 July 2006, entitled "One Signature against 301", Hrant Dink had said that he believed that an "Armenian genocide" had happened. He said: "Of course I say that there was a genocide because the result speaks for itself. You can see that a people who lived on this soil for 4,000 years disappeared after those events."

Degrading Turkishness

Although charges against Hrant Dink were dropped after his death, prosecutor Mücahit Ercan has demanded that Serkis Seropyan, the licence owner of "Agos", and the managing editor, Arat Dink (Hrant Dink's son), be punished in the same case.

Ercan said that "we believe that the accused are degrading Turkishness by suggesting, contrary to historical truth and without proof, that a people were destroyed by Turks." He called for punishment under Articles 301 and 53.

Arat Dink stated that if people asked him insistently whether what had happened was a genocide, "I cannot deny myself, my history and my identity. These comments of mind had also made the front pages of Turkish newspapers before, but there was never a trial. That is because at the time there was no operation to "show me my place".

Seropyan said that "if it were necessary to collect signatures against Article 301 again, I would do it".

Call for acquittal

The defendants' lawer, Fethiye Cetin, claimed that the trial was only continuing because her clients were newsworthy. She pleaded for their acquittal, citing the dismissal of historian Taner Akcam's case as a precedent.

Lawyer Erdal Dogan stated that the cases against the "Agos" employees were indefensible in the light of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

Karakasli acquitted, Engin still on trial

Karin Karakasli, an editor of "Agos" who had received a suspended sentence of 6 months imprisonment for a series of articles on "Armenian identity", was acquitted after the Supreme Court of Appeals had ordered a retrial.

In another case against journalist Aydin Engin and the "Agos" owner Serkis Seropyan and managing editor Arat Dink concerning an article by Engin entitled "The Judiciary Needs to be Disturbed", Dink and Seropyan were acquitted, but Engin still faces one charge of "insulting the panel of judges" in his article.

On request of the defence, which had not taken part in the deliberations, the case will continue on 18 July. (EÖ/EÜ/AG/EÜ).