Same Court Same Journalist Different Decrees

The indecisiveness and contradictions which the Turkish government becomes embroiled in when dealing with freedom of expression become obvious when considering Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In one case in the district town of Gerger in the province of Adiyaman (south-east of Turkey), a case against journalist Haci Bogatekin was dismissed by Public Prosecutor Sadullah Ovacikli. Writing on a flea epidemic in an article entitled "Flea, Pig and Agha" in the local newspaper, Bogatekin had criticised the government.

Prosecutor Ovacikli cited the Observer-Guardian versus United Kingdom and the Prager-Oberschlick versus Austria cases, which had been taken to the European Court of Human Rights, as precedents for his decision.

After dismissal a new trial

However, three months after the dismissal, the same prosecutor's office started a trial against the same journalist for a similar case, citing Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

In an unsigned article published on 10 March 2007 and entitled "Turkey Has Made a Mistake", Bogatekin had said: "The government has made a mistake. Where and when? Yesterday, in the East and South-East. And then in Istanbul. In Maras, in Sivas. Today in Trabzon, Istanbul, Mersin and the South-East..." The journalist is now on trial for "degrading the state" and the court case will begin on 25 July at a penal court in Gerger.

Bogatekin said in his statement to the prosecution on 3 April: "I did not write the article with a criminal intent. As a journalist, I tried to criticise some of the mistakes the government made in the past and recently." However, his statement did not prevent prosecution.

Wanted to prevent repetition of mistakes

Bogatekin argued that he had presented his thoughts in order to show that the repetition of mistakes would blight the future of the country. In his article, he had held the government responsible for "the death of millions of Armenians and Syriac Christians in the East and South-East, after that the death of the Alevi in Dersim, then the Greek Orthodox in Istanbul with the September movement, and more recently the death of

hundreds of people in Maras, Malatya, Corum and Sivas".

In the previous case against Bogatekin, related to the article published on 7 December 2006, in which he had criticised the government's hygiene standards, the prosecution had dismissed proceedings, arguing that "although freedom of expression was exaggerated to a certain extent, the article even contained some provocations, and some of the expressions used were polemical in nature, the expressions were used to support an objective statement, and they are not considered an unfounded personal attack". (EÖ/EÜ/AG/EÜ)