14
June 2007
2. "Kurdish rebels kill Turkish officer", Kurdish guerrillas killed a Turkish army major and injured two other soldiers Wednesday in a roadside bomb attack in southeastern Turkey, the governor's office said.
3. "Five Iranian soldiers killed in border clashes", five Iranian soldiers have been killed during clashes with armed rebels in a Kurdish populated area in the northwest of the country, local papers reported on Wednesday.
4. "Turkey is aggressive towards Kurds: Barzani", the leader of the Kurdish regional administration said that the question over oil rich city of Kirkuk would be solved according to the Iraqi constitution.
5. "301" Doesn't Exist Europe", an international conference on freedom of expression in Turkey and the EU, organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and hosted at Bilgi University in Istanbul, participants discussed threats to freedom of expression and compared the situation.
6. "Dink 301 Trial Continues to Haunt Colleagues", after the murder of journalist Hrant Dink, the trials against him under Article 301 were dropped. However, other journalists from the Armenian newspaper Agos, Sarkis Seropyan, Arat Dink and Karin Karakasli are still on trial. Their next hearing is 14 June.
1. - AFP - "Turkish court sentences Kurdish rebel leader's lawyer":
ISTANBUL / 13 June 2007
A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced one of the lawyers representing detained Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan to nearly four years in jail for supporting a "terrorist outfit".
Lawyer Irfan Dundar's office said the Istanbul court had slapped a three-year, nine-month sentence on him for "aiding and harbouring a terrorist organisation," but added he would remain free until an appeals court passed a final verdict.
Dundar was arrested after returning from rebel camps in northern Iraq where he had met with top aides of his client, Ocalan.
The 58-year-old Ocalan is the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a insurgent campaign in the mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984 that has claimed some 37,000 lives.
Ocalan was sentenced to death in a high-profile trial in 1999 for treason, but this was commuted in 2002 to a life-term.
He is held in the tiny north-western island of Imrali, where he is the sole prisoner.
In May 2005, the European Court of Human Rights upheld
a ruling in favour of Ocalan, saying that he had been unfairly tried
by a Turkish court, and urged Ankara to retry him. 
2. - AP - "Kurdish rebels kill Turkish officer":
CIZRE / 13 June 2007
Kurdish guerrillas killed a Turkish army major and injured two other soldiers Wednesday in a roadside bomb attack in southeastern Turkey, the governor's office said.
The attack near the town of Yuksekova in Hakkari province, bordering Iraq and Iran, came a day after the Kurdish rebel group PKK declared a "unilateral cease-fire" in attacks against Turkey. The rebel group, however, on insisted on the right to defend itself.
Turkey ignored the rebel statement.
The rebels detonated a remote-controlled plastic bomb as the troops patrolled the area near the town of Yuksekova, the governor's office said.
The Turkish military has intensified anti-rebel operations against the guerrillas in the country's southeast, on the border with Iraq. On Wednesday, the soldiers were seen manning several checkpoints as part of the security measures on the road between the towns of Cizre and Sirnak, close to the Iraqi border.
The rebels have been fighting more than two decades for
autonomy in Turkey.
3. - AFP - "Five Iranian soldiers killed in border clashes":
TEHRAN / 13 June 2007
Five Iranian soldiers have been killed during clashes with armed rebels in a Kurdish populated area in the northwest of the country, local papers reported on Wednesday.
Two of them were killed Sunday by rebels close to the town of Maku, located in West Azerbaijan province bordering Turkey
Two more were killed in clashes on the road to Mahabad, a Kurdish city located in the same province.
The fifth soldier was killed close to Piranshahr, again in West Azerbaijan, after stepping on a landmine.
On the last day of May, Iran reported that seven soldiers, including two generals, had been killed in clashes with rebels in a Kurdish populated area in the north of the country.
West Azarbaijan has been the scene of regular armed clashes between security forces and Kurdish militant parties, in particular Pejak, a group linked to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Iran is bound by treaty with Turkey to fight the PKK. In return, Turkey has pledged to fight Iran's main armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen, whose fighters are now detained at a US-controlled camp in Iraq.
Turkey has praised Iran's efforts to crack down on rebels linked to the PKK, who have been waging a deadly armed struggle for self-rule in the southeast of Turkey since 1984.
Turkey and Iran have in turn expressed dissatisfaction
with Iraq's failure to expel Kurdish militants from its side of the
border and even threatened to launch cross-border raids inside Iraq
if Baghdad does not act.
4. - NTV/MSNBC - "Turkey is aggressive towards Kurds: Barzani":
The leader of the Kurdish regional administration said that the question over oil rich city of Kirkuk would be solved according to the Iraqi constitution.
SULEYMANI / 13 June 2007
Turkey has an aggressive position towards the Kurds of northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, the head of the semi autonomous Kurdish region and the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) said Wednesday.
Speaking in the Iraqi city of Suleymaniyah after meeting with Kurdish leaders Barzani said that Turkish-northern Iraqi relations had changed course after the Iraq War.
The Iraqi Kurdish leader claimed that instead of dealing
with the Kirkuk question or the PKK problem Turkey was targeting the
existence of the Kurdish population.
5. - Bianet - "301" Doesn't Exist Europe":
An international conference on freedom of expression in Turkey and the EU, organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and hosted at Bilgi University in Istanbul, participants discussed threats to freedom of expression and compared the situation.
ISTANBUL / 12 June 2007
At an international conference organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's Turkish office at Bilgi University in Istanbul, it became clear that the reforms passed in Turkey since 2001 have not been really put into practice by the judiciary.
The title of the conference was "Freedom of Expression and Its Limits, Penal Law and Freedom of Expression in Turkey and the European Union".
Ilkiz: Turkey going backwards
Communication lawyer Fikret Ilkiz stated that although the judiciary was emphasizing freedom of speech, Turkey was going backwards. He questioned whether there was real support for freedom of expression.
Summarizing the legal reforms which have taken place since 2001 in the framework of EU admission negotiations, Ilkiz pointed out that since 2004, the Supreme Court of Appeal's General Penal Committee had decreed against three journalists, Selahattin Aydar, Mehmet Sevket Eygi, and Hrant Dink.
Tarhanli: Limits of freedom of expression need to be discussed
The Dean of the Law Faculty at Bilgi University, Prof. Dr. Turgut Tarhanli, pointed out that freedom of expression had become a controversial topic in Europe too, citing the "Mohammed caricature crisis" and the "Law against the Denial of the Armenian Genocide" as examples. After 11 September there were new influences on the freedom of speech, and the limits to it needed to be discussed.
Schmidt: Democracy develops with debate
The General Secretary of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Dr. Roland Schmidt, reminded the audience that Turkey was a member of the European Council and had recognised the European Human Rights Agreement. He added that democracy could only grow in an environment where the culture of discussion was developed.
Ilkiz: Humane rather than authoritarian law
Ilkiz informed the audience that Turkey had been convicted 308 times by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from 1995 to 2003, and that in 132 other cases a friendly settlement was reached.
According to Ilkiz, the Law on the Press, which was passed in 2004, was particularly relevant because it defined press freedom in a modern way and guaranteed the safety of news sources.
Reactions to Minister of Justice
Several speakers reacted to Minister of Justice Cemil Cicek, who had once declared that Europe had similar articles to Article 301, the controversial article of the Turkish penal code, which has often been used to try writers, journalists and academics.
Prof. Dr. Friedrich-Christian Schröder, the vice president of the Penal Code Union German National Committee, said that as a reaction to the Third Reich, the penal code had very few articles protecting government institutions, and that there were very few verdicts against defendants. He added that the heaviest sanctions in Germany were against anyone defending mass killings, crimes against humanity or genocide.
Dr. Cristina Pavarani of Parma and Florence Universities
said that Article 21 of the Italian constitution guaranteed freedom
of the press and of expression, but that Italy had sometimes fallen
short in its application, and thus been convicted by the ECHR. In 2006
there were reforms to the penal code in order to reduce the penalties
for "denigrating the Republic" or "crimes against the
Italian flag" to a symbolic level.
6. - Bianet - "Dink 301 Trial Continues to Haunt Colleagues":
After the murder of journalist Hrant Dink, the trials against him under Article 301 were dropped. However, other journalists from the Armenian newspaper Agos, Sarkis Seropyan, Arat Dink and Karin Karakasli are still on trial. Their next hearing is 14 June.
ISTANBUL / 13 June 2007
Although murdered journalist Hrant Dink's cases have been dropped, other journalsists from the "Agos" newspaper are still in court.
In an interview with Reuters News Agency on 21 July 2006, titled "One Signature against 301", Hrant Dink had said that he believed that an "Armenian genocide" had happened. In the case opened against him, the newspaper's licence owner Sarkis Seropyan and the responsible editor, Arat Dink for "degrading Turkishness", the latter two will continue to be tried.
Dink had 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."
On the same day as this trial, another of Hrant Dink's trials will be considered: in a series of articles called "Armenian identity", in which he criticised the Diaspora Armenians, he had written that "the clean blood that will replace the poisonous blood emptied out of the Turks is to be found in the actual artery of Armenians with Armenia. Dink had received a six-month prison sentence, later postponed.
The Penal General Board of the Supreme Court of Appeals had rejected the Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Public Prosecutor's Office's argument that the statement did not represent a crime under Article 159 and the demand that the indictment be quashed on general grounds with 18 against 6 votes, and thus the case will be reconsidered by a penal court in Sisli, Istanbul.
In the initial trial, editor Karin Karakasli had been cleared at the first hearing, but after Dink's death, her case will be reopened.
Keskin Tried for Writing about Dink's Murder
The former president of the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD), lawyer Eren Keskin, is being tried for his article "Special Forces at Work" which was about the murder of Hrant Dink.
After his first hearing on 31 May at a penal court in
Beyoglu, Istanbul, Keskin's trial will continue 27 September. He is
being tried for "using the media to degrade the state's armed forces".
Keskin claims: "In my article I did not degrade the army, but I
think that the greatest obstacle to the democratisation of Turkey is
the Turkish army."