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Turkey launches investigation against scientists under notorious Article 301

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art 301Turkey’s Prosecutor General has launched an investigation against the “Academics for Peace” initiative under the notorious  Article 301of the country’s Criminal Code.

1128 Turkish scientists and representatives of intelligence, who addressed a letter to President Erdogan urging him to make peace with the Kurds, may face imprisonment for a period of six months to two years.  The scientists are also charged under an article related to “propaganda for a terrorist organization”. The mentioned article envisages imprisonment for a period from one to five years.

The same article was used to try Armenian Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was later acquitted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

1128 scientists and representatives of intelligence signed a declaration, urging the Turkish authorities to stop the massacre policy against the Kurds, allow the monitoring commission to visit the Kurdish-inhabited regions and create conditions for negotiations.

President Erdogan called those people traitors and ordered to launch an investigation against them. 12 scientists from the Kocaeli University have already been arrested.

Turkish Crime Against Humanity: Human rights lawyer gets 10-month prison sentence

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202942_newsdetailEren Keskin, a prominent Turkish lawyer, has been handed a 10-month prison sentence on charges of “insulting the Turkish nation and the Republic of Turkey” for criticizing the killing of a 12-year-old by a police officer while speaking at conference back in 2005.

A former president of the Human Rights Association’s (İHD) İstanbul office, Keskin was a guest speaker at a conference in the Çerkezköy district of Tekirdağ province. While there, she commented on the killing of 12-year-old Uğur Kaymaz and his father by police, saying: “The [Turkish] state has a wild mindset [that allows it] to slay a 12-year-old. Turkey has to answer [for this]. Turkey has a dirty history.” Ten years after her comment, a court sentenced her to 10 months in jail, basing its ruling on the highly controversial Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).

The judge chose not to put Keskin on probation, saying she “has a bad record and might commit another similar crime in the future.”

Speaking to the media on her conviction, Keskin said she has no criminal record and that the judge, seeing her as an enemy, acted with vengeance.
“The expressions ‘bad record’ and ‘criminal record’ are used for people who have committed serious crimes. I am a human rights activist and a lawyer. So far, I have only been tried for my views. The government claims that there is nobody in jail for their opinions, but apparently nothing has changed in Turkey,” Keskin said.

Many Turkish journalists and authors, including Elif Şafak and Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, have faced prosecution based on the same article, mostly concerning comments supporting claims of an Armenian genocide in 1915. Following a large number of cases, an amendment was introduced to Article 301 in 2008, narrowing the scope of the crime. If the Supreme Court of Appeals upholds Keskin’s conviction, she will be the first person in a long while to be imprisoned based on the article.