20 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
The investigation into alleged police involvement in the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink is to be reopened. Dink was the editor of Agos, a bilingual newspaper which challenged the official Turkish version of the 1915 Armenian genocide, which holds that hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished because of hunger and suffering in World War One. He was murdered in 2007 by Ogün Samast. During the trial, concerns were raised over photos which showed Samast posing with Istanbul police officers. In October 2008, the officers were acquitted. At the time the court claimed that it could no “solid and convincing evidence” to convict them. The Provincial Administration Board has now decided that the investigation can take into consideration evidence relating to four police officers, former Police Chief İbrahim Pala, Chief Inspectors Volkan Altınbulak and İbrahim Şevki Eldivan and police officers Bahadır Tekin and Özcan Özkan, although four other officers involved in the case will not be investigated.
30 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost
Hürriyet newspaper journalist Nurettin Kurt and editorial manager Hasan Kılıç face between one and three years imprisonment for publishing photographs of Colonel E.Y.B. The photographs were taken during the ongoing investigation into the alleged plot to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. Kurt and Kılıç have been charged under Anti-Terror Laws for “identifying officials on anti-terrorist duties as targets of terror organizations”. The court has not yet stated which terror organisations Kurt and Kılıç supposedly identified as targeting the Colonel.
23 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost
Haldun Açıksözlü, actor and director of the theatre play Laz Marks, faces two years in jail over allegations that he insulted the prime minister in his play. The show has run for a year and has been shown in over 80 provinces.
The charges came only a week after British artist, Michael Dickenson, was fined for superimposing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s head onto the body of a dog.
17 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost
Editor-in-chief of the Firat newspaper Hacı Boğatekin has been sentenced to five years in jail. Bogatekin was charged with “insult” and “defamation” and “attempting to influence a fair trial”. Three other journalists were charged with similar offences. In one of the offending articles Bogatekin argued that the real threat did not come from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party but from religious leader Fethullah Gülen’s congregation. He also published prosecutor Sadullah Ovacıklı’s criticism of his abbreviation of Gülen’s name to “Feto” and made allegations about the prosecutors relationship with Güle. Boğatekin was awarded the Press Freedom Award in 2008 and was awarded by the Contemporary Journalists’ Association (ÇGD) in 2009.
