Breeze Perspectives: Death of pro-Armenian journalist in Turkey spurs freedom of speech debate
Turkey has some civil liberties problems to work out before it can be taken seriously by the West or enter the European Union
By John Telfeyan, contributing writer
Posted on February 9, 2007

On Jan. 19, Hrant Dink, the editor of the Armenian language newspaper Agos and a Turkish citizen of Armenian heritage, was fatally shot outside of his office in Istanbul. The gunman, Ogün Samast, was a Turkish teenager under orders from a Muslim terrorist organizer. This event creates a major stumbling block for the secular Turkish governments bid to join the European Union.

In the following week, more than 1,000 protestors, who considered Dink and Agos to be the voice of the Armenian community in Istanbul, marched to the site of his murder to bring attention to and protest against the restrictions on freedom of speech that Dink had been fighting against when he was alive.

According to Aricle 301 of the Turkish law code, insulting “Turkishness” is punishable by a three-year jail sentence. Dink himself had been prosecuted under this law for — among other things — mentioning the Armenian genocide of 1915, where more than a million Armenians in Turkey were massacred. Turkey is one of the only nations with Western aspirations that does not acknowledge that the genocide took place, and speaking of the genocide is therefore criminal.

The Turkish government first prosecuted Dink after a speech he made in 2002 for comments he made about the Turkish national anthem. At the time he was murdered, Dink was again being threatened with a three-year jail sentence for other, equally “insulting” comments. 

Though the Turkish prime minister has condemned the murders, the assassination has shed light on the greater issue of freedom of speech in Turkey. As speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Tigran Torosyan has stated that Turkey should not  “even dream about joining the European Union” in light of the recent events; other officials who want to keep Turkey out the European Union have started using this incident as leverage.

Although Turkey is the most progressive Islamic country in the world, secular according to its constitution, 99 percent of its population is Muslim, predominantly Hanafist Sunni. The government is constantly torn between the secular influence of Europe — and its own constitution — and its devout people who are being led against their will to uncomfortable new heights of liberalism against their will in order for Turkey to join the European Union.

But extremists are still fighting against change, and those extremist actions have spoken louder than the politician’s words. Even the judicial system is corrupt, to the point that honest laymen do not receive fair trials and the majority of judges still carry a belief that they are elite and should not be touchable by common journalists.

To its credit, the Turkish government — a mere one hundred years old — has abolished torture, the death penalty and military interference in politics. It has also increased women’s and minority rights, but without freedom of speech there will be nothing to keep the government in check. As long as any criticism of the Turkish government is punishable under Article 301, no press institution will be able to act as a watchdog.

Dink fought for freedom of speech for four years, and he died for it. Other journalists are picking up where he left off; more than 60 journalists have been prosecuted using Article 301, many of them for recognizing the 1915 genocide. Dink, although adamant about recognizing the Armenian genocide, was more concerned with freedom of speech. Before his death changed his plans, he intended to travel to France, where politicians are debating the prohibition of genocide denial; Dink planned to deny the Armenian genocide out of principle in protest of such encroachments on freedom of speech.

The European Union will continue to look disfavorably on Turkey’s application for entrance while laws like Article 301 are still on the books. Some people in the European Union are already using Turkey’s civil liberty problems to try and keep them out. Hopefully the attention — small though it may have been in the West — paid to Dink’s untimely death in the last few weeks will bring more awareness about freedom of speech in Turkey before the European Union lets them in.

John Telfeyan is a senior physics major.