ANKARA - In a fresh test of Turkeyâs human rights record and its bid to join the EU, a state prosecutor has filed charges against five journalists for comments they made on a conference about World War One massacres of Armenians.| How is that EU membership thing working out, anyway? |
Four of the five columnists are being charged under the controversial Article 301 of Turkeyâs penal code -- the same used against the countryâs most famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, whose trial begins on Dec. 16, and many other journalists. The article makes it a crime to insult state institutions or âTurkishnessâ.
| I don't see why the EU socialists would object to that, they'd all like to be able to use the same kind of law against their opponents ... |
The journalists had all criticised efforts by prosecutors and nationalist lawyers to ban a September academic conference at two universities in Istanbul dedicated to the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 90 years ago. Although a court blocked the conference at the prosecutorsâ request -- much to the embarrassment of Turkeyâs pro-EU government -- organisers circumvented the ban at the last minute by moving the venue to a third university in Istanbul.
In their columns, the five journalists had branded the court ruling an attack on academic freedom and a travesty of justice.
| Busted for telling the truth? That's novel. |