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Dogu Perincek, head of the Turkish Workers’ Party, called the Armenian genocide “an international lie” during a speech in the Swiss city of Lausanne in July 2005.

The state prosecutor has called for a six month prison term for violating a 1995 Swiss law that bans denying, belittling or justifying any genocide. The maximum penalty is three years.

Perincek told the Lausanne criminal court that there had been no genocide against Armenians, but there had been “reciprocal massacres,” according to Swiss Radio.

“I defend my right to freedom of expression,” Swiss Radio quoted Perincek, 65, as saying in German. “There was no genocide, therefore this law cannot apply to my remarks.” [Read More]

Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish editor, was slain in Istanbul in January. His newspaper columns had long demanded respect and improved conditions for Armenians and recognition of the deep and tortured history of Armenians in Turkey. Dink was gunned down in broad daylight Jan. 19 on a sidewalk outside his office — allegedly by a teenage boy.

“We were all comparing notes about which of us had only one bodyguard and which of us had two, and we joked a little about being in competition with each other over this,” said journalist and novelist Perihan Magden, who was among those placed under police protection after threats by ultranationalists. “It was comical, but also very tragic.”

In the wake of the January assassination in Istanbul of prominent ethnic Armenian editor Hrant Dink, Turkey’s intellectual community is feeling under siege to a degree not experienced in decades. [Read More]

Police detained the two on Saturday in Trabzon, the Black Sea port city where all eight other suspects, including the alleged teenage triggerman, lived. Police, meanwhile, released another suspect in Istanbul following his interrogation over the weekend, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported Monday.

Last month’s killing of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul prompted international condemnation as well as debate within Turkey about free speech, and whether state institutions were tolerant of militant nationalists.

On Friday, a group of activists invited prosecutors to press charges against them in a protest against a law that restricts free speech and has been used to prosecute intellectuals.

Five members of the small Powerful Turkey Party stood in front of a prosecutor at a courthouse and repeated statements by Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, slain journalist Dink and other intellectuals that were used as evidence to prosecute them under Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which bans insults to Turkish identity. [Read More]

The editorial “Pelosi’s pandering against Turkey,” (Tuesday) makes the incorrect assumption that Congress’ consideration of the Armenian genocide resolution (H. Res. 106) focuses on events of the past. If the genocide in Darfur is any indication, ending genocide and crimes against humanity is the key battle of the 21st century.

Over the past 100 years, we have seen the Armenian genocide, Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust and genocide in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and now Darfur. How can the United States truly speak with moral authority in its efforts to promote peace and democracy around the world if we can’t speak truthfully about the Armenian genocide? What example are we setting through the State Department’s blatant submission to Turkey’s pressure as it lobbies our own Congress to deny this crime?

In considering H. Res. 106, the United States has a historic opportunity to honor human rights and take a step toward the reconciliation of two peoples still divided by this genocide and the state policy of denial instigated by the Turkish government since 1915. Far from focusing on the past, passage of this resolution would be an investment in our future — a future without genocide.

Karine BIRAZIAN
Executive DirectorArmenian National Committee of America

Kocharian, interviewed by Le Figaro newspaper during a visit to France, was asked why his country had refused Turkey’s offer to form a joint research committee to discuss the World War I-era killings of Armenians, which Armenia considers genocide.

“Normalization of bilateral relations is up to governments, not historians,” Kocharian was quoted as saying.

“That’s why we are ready to establish diplomatic relations with Turkey without conditions, and to create an intergovernmental commission and to discuss all questions, even the most sensitive,” he said.

Armenia accuses Turkey of genocide in the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as part of a campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey. Turkey denies this. [Read More]

The law — Article 301 of the Turkish penal code — has resulted in prosecutions against leading Turkish intellectuals, including the Nobel author Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink, an Armenian- Turkish journalist killed last month in Istanbul.

Ali Babacan, a leading member of the governing Justice and Development Party and a minister in the cabinet, said the law was causing harm to Turkey.

Asked if Ankara would abandon the law, he said: “That is not going to happen. Article 301 will stay.” But he said the government was looking at ways to change the way the law was being implemented and said his hope was that it could be altered before elections in November.
Turkish analysts said such a change would most likely entail narrowing the legal definition of what constitutes an insult to Turkishness and amending the law to make it compatible with the European Court of Human Rights. [Read More]

As the 10-day film odyssey draws to a close with the awards on Saturday, and with four competition entries still to be screened, crews and critics from around the world are packing their bags and scratching their heads to pick the highlights.

“The 57th Berlinale…might best be thought of as an average festival,” wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times.

He goes on to say that Berlin, once a bastion of serious cinema, has become “something bigger, more varied and perhaps less distinctive.” The festival has grown rapidly in recent years and attracts Hollywood glamour as well as art-house films.

Critics argue that some of the best films in Berlin this year were outside the main lineup, and wondered whether festival director Dieter Kosslick had shied away from incendiary topics that robbed the competition of its “Michael Moore moment.”

Cannes had it in 2004 with Moore’s controversial documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which went on to win the competition, while Berlin had it last year with Michael Winterbottom’s “The Road to Guantanamo,” about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

This year the same buzz may have been created by “The Lark Farm,” a drama depicting the tragedy of a family almost wiped out in the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

Turkey denies allegations by Armenia and others that 1.5 million Armenians died in systematic genocide at Turkish hands. [Read More]