About IFEX:

News by region:

IFEX Campaigns and Advocacy:

IFEX Email Products:

Opportunities and assistance:

Alert

Two journalists investigated under Article 301

(BIANET/IFEX) - Article 301 continues to haunt journalists in Turkey. Two "Radikal" newspaper journalists, Perihan Magden and Yildirim Türker, are under investigation for "degrading the state's armed forces".

On 29 June 2007, prosecutor Ali Cakir in Bagcilar, Istanbul, who had conducted an investigation of Magden for an article entitled "State, you are painted all over tonight", dismissed proceedings against the writer.

Magden had criticised a publishing and broadcasting embargo regarding the finding of a stock of ammunition in a house in Ümraniye, Istanbul. She is also being investigated for "creating dislike for the military service" in the same article.

Following a complaint by one Recep Akkus, journalist Yildirim Türker is also being investigated under Article 301/2.

In his 8 July 2007 article in the "Radikal 2" supplement, entitled "Invisible Attack", Yildirim wrote about the indifference of state authorities and the media to racism in the period leading up to journalist Hrant Dink's murder.

The article ended by stating: "The whole of society must react when, not 20 or 30, but even one person uses racist, discriminatory, threatening language. We have to look at the closeness of these disordered nationalist militia and the state and the Republican-Kemalist-theorists. Armenians are frightened and uneasy. How do you feel?"