Turkish prosecutor investigates apology campaign
Prompted by a petition from six residents of Ankara, the city’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation of the campaign for an apology for the mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915. The petitioners call for criminal charges against the campaign instigators and everyone who signed the online apology on the grounds that the statement violates Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which outlaws “insulting Turkishness”.
Calling the “so-called genocide claims” baseless — which they described as also being the stance of the Turkish state — they further said the “so-called intellectuals describe the state policy as ‘denial’ and declare that they do not approve of it, so they accuse the Turkish nation of ‘committing genocide’,” and as such, they are “degrading the Turkish nation.”
The prosecutor’s office started an investigation into the issue; the organizers of the Internet campaign will be asked to testify and the Web site www.ozurdiliyoruz.com will be investigated, Anatolia noted. The apology campaign collected close to 27,000 signatures on the Internet since it was started in December of last year.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and leading military officials have denounced supporters of the apology, even though its text stops short of calling the killings “genocide”.
Under recent amendments to Article 301, a formal court case cannot be initiated without permission of the Justice Ministry. Anyone found guilty of violating Article 301 faces a jail sentence.
In related news, Turkish police announced yesterday that they had arrested a man suspected of planning an attack against one of the campaign organisers.
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