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Minorities targeted in Turkey

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  • #1

    Minorities targeted in Turkey

    Assyrian International News Agency
    Web Site Targets Assyrian and Other Minorities in Turkey
    Posted GMT 2-23-2008 10:10:31

    ISTANBUL -- A written question has been submitted to Parliament concerning a Web site that targets minority groups in Turkey by publishing telephone numbers and full addresses of many Armenian, Jewish and Greek schools, places of worship and publishing houses, daily Hürriyet reported yesterday.

    Republican People's Party (CHP) Ankara deputy, Yılmaz Ateş, brought the issue to the attention of Parliament and emphasized that the Web site, to which everyone has access, should be taken down immediately.

    The Web site www.tennet.8m.com provides information on how to make Molotov xxxxtail bombs and how to avoid getting caught by the police.

    It also gives detailed information on how and when to attack a building and encourages those who share opinions to meet through the site's chat room.

    According to the site, the targets are Armenians, Jews, Assyrians and Atatürkçü Düşünce Associations (ADD) that support the opinions and reforms of Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”
    Tags: None
  • #2
    TRIAL FOR "INSULTING TURKISHNESS" STILL HOUNDING CONVERTS
    by Barbara G. Baker

    ChristianNewsToday.com
    March 17 2008

    In spite of EU pressure, revision of Article 301 appears at a
    standstill.

    SILIVRI, Turkey, In an effort to prolong the trial of two Turkish
    converts to Christianity accused of "denigrating Islam and
    Turkishness," three gendarme soldiers on Thursday (March 13) were
    summoned to testify before the Silivri Criminal Court in northwestern
    Turkey as witnesses for the prosecution - which has yet to provide
    any evidence for its case.

    Turan Topal and Hakan Tastan, who were searched, detained and then
    charged in October 2006 under Turkey's controversial Article 301
    restricting freedom of speech, have been on trial for 18 months. The
    case was further delayed Thursday when two witnesses summoned to
    testify failed to show up, although at least one of them had been in
    the corridor of the courthouse just before the session started.

    Accordingly, the judge ordered that prosecution witnesses Kemal
    Kalyoncu and Emin Demirci be brought "forcibly" to the next hearing,
    set for June 24. Testimony is also expected at the June hearing from
    an additional three gendarme soldiers in Silivri, as well as three
    from the Istanbul Gendarme Headquarters.

    "From our side, we can say that the outcome of the hearing was
    positive," defense lawyer Haydar Polat told Compass. "The witnesses
    simply confirmed what happened in their investigation, without
    producing any evidence whatever of the charges against my clients."

    But on the negative side, Polat said, "All these new witnesses are
    unnecessary."

    The state prosecutor had called for the Christians' acquittal last
    July, noting that the youthful plaintiffs in the case had given
    contradictory testimonies and no credible evidence had been produced
    to prove the charges.

    But the new judge assigned to the case in November accepted prosecution
    lawyer demands to call another dozen witnesses to testify.

    "Of course our clients are distressed by this," Polat told Compass,
    noting that the two Christians are being required to attend and hear
    the new prosecution witnesses, some of whom deliberately fail to
    appear in court. "All these extra witnesses are being called simply
    for the purpose of prolonging the case. There is no other purpose."

    The three soldiers from the Silivri Gendarme Headquarters testified
    separately to their involvement in searching the defendants' homes
    and office on October 11, 2006, when they said they found a large
    number of Bibles and Christian documents, as well as several computers.

    One of the soldiers said that at the time of their court-ordered
    investigation, military intelligence officers had shown them
    an organizational chart, listing names of alleged leaders of the
    detained Christians' group, which is accused of conducting illegal
    religious activities.

    Although the Christians' trial in Silivri is officially held in
    "open" court, the current judge has refused to admit any Turkish or
    international press to observe the last two hearings.

    Divine Delay

    Defendant Topal told Compass that as he drank tea with several police
    officers on duty at the courthouse during the hour-long delay for
    yesterday's hearing to begin, they asked him why he had left Islam
    and become a Christian.

    "They insisted that I was being 'used' by Christian missionaries,
    that they were paying me lots of money to do this," Topal said. "I
    explained that I came to faith 17 years ago all by myself, reading
    the New Testament, without knowing any other Christian in Turkey."

    Topal told them that he was not getting rich, and that if they believed
    otherwise they could visit him in his one-room flat in Istanbul.

    "Of course, they think I have somehow broken the law," Topal said.

    "So I just told them that I am not doing anything that is illegal,
    because under the democratic laws of Turkey, everyone is free to
    practice and witness about his personal faith."

    Prosecution Lawyer Jailed

    Although six local attorneys for the prosecution were present at
    the March 13 hearing, the ultranationalist lawyer leading their team
    since the case opened in November 2006 was notably absent.

    Prosecution attorney Kemal Kerincsiz has been jailed since mid-January
    on charges of direct involvement in the criminal "Ergenekon" gang
    suspected of instigating a string of unsolved murders over the past
    two decades.

    Another jailed Ergenekon suspect, Sevgi Erenerol, had accompanied
    Kerincsiz to all the previous Silivri hearings against Topal and
    Tastan. Erenerol was the spokesperson for the so-called Turkish
    Orthodox Church, a bogus institution which reportedly became a front
    for laundering the cash for assassination hits engineered by Ergenekon.

    According to Turkish media reports, the Ergenekon gang had a direct
    hand in the murder of three Christians in Malatya last April, as well
    as the assassinations of an Italian priest in Trabzon in February
    2006 and an Armenian editor in January 2007.

    Kerincsiz had gained national notoriety since May 2005, when he began
    to open cases against well-known Turkish academics, journalists and
    intellectuals under Article 301 provisions.

    301 Changes 'Shelved Indefinitely'

    A senior member of the European Parliament declared last month that
    the European Union was losing patience with Turkey's ruling Justice
    and Development Party (AKP) over its failure to change the restrictive
    Article 301.

    "We're preparing a report for the European Parliament which will be
    voted on in April," Joost Lagendijk told the British Broadcasting
    Corporation on February 11. "If nothing has moved by then on freedom
    of expression, the report will be negative."

    Turkey's prime minister, justice minister and president have declared
    repeatedly over the past two years that amending the law was both
    needful and "high on their agenda."

    But last week AKP deputy Nihat Ergun admitted that although a revised
    draft of Article 301 was completed, it had been shelved indefinitely.

    "I don't know exactly when it will be brought up [in Parliament],"
    Ergun told Today's Zaman newspaper last Tuesday (March 11).

    Reportedly this reflects accommodations to the opposition Nationalist
    Movement Party , which supported the AKP's recent constitutional
    amendment to allow headscarves on university campuses but opposes
    making any changes to Article 301.

    Nevertheless, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan claimed on Channel 7
    television yesterday that "in a very short time" the AKP government's
    proposed amendments to Article 301 would be brought before the
    Turkish Parliament.

    Babacan said that after the Foundations Law, Article 301 was the second
    most important package of political reforms now pending in Turkey.

    Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek and other senior AKP members have
    insisted that there is nothing wrong with the current law. Instead,
    they say, the state simply needs to educate its prosecutors and judges
    regarding free speech issues.

    Angered by ongoing criticism of his stance, Cicek claimed in a January
    10 interview, "Article 301 is not my personal issue. And 301 is not
    a problem for anyone in Turkey."

    "Tell that to Rakel's face!" shouted a banner headline in Taraf
    newspaper the next morning. Rakel Dink's husband, Armenian Christian
    journalist Hrant Dink, was assassinated in January 2007 while under
    trial for several alleged violations of Article 301.

    Proposed AKP changes in Article 301, such as reducing the maximum
    sentence from three to two years in prison and requiring prosecutors
    to get the Justice Minister's permission to file charges, have been
    labeled "cosmetic" by their critics, who demand the law be abolished
    completely.

    "What the AKP is proposing as 'reform' in that contentious article
    is not reform at all, but an attempt to deceive," Turkish Daily News
    editor Yusuf Kanli wrote in a January 9 editorial.

    "Hrant was killed and scores of other Turkish intellectuals were
    harassed and made targets under that Penal Code clause," Kanli said.

    "We would prefer to see this contentious article erased...all
    together."
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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