News Website Founder Büyükçakır Sentenced to 11 Months

Cem Büyükçakır, General Publication Director of the "Haberin Yeri" ('News Site') website, received an eleven-month prison sentence on the grounds of having published a reader comment that implied that President Abdullah Gül descended from an Armenian family. Büyükçakır currently prepares an appeal.

At the end of September, the Istanbul Büyükçekmece 3^rd Civil Court of First Instance convicted Büyükçakır of "insulting President Gül". The founder of the HaberinYeri.net website removed the comment as soon as he had been issued a warning. The journalist announced that the sentences was neither postponed nor converted into a monetary fine.

The trial was opened upon a complaint by the Presidential Office. Defence lawyer A. Fatma Bülbül claimed that the publisher was not responsible for the reader comments and requested to drop the procedures. She pointed to the possibility of disclosing the identity of the person who posted the comment and demanded to appoint an expert accordingly.

"I just wanted the evidence to be investigated.."

Büyükçakır said after the hearing, "I received an eleven-month prison sentence for a comment that I removed as soon as the warning reached me. It is very strange that people still insist on controlling the internet press in this country. In terms of law it is upsetting that the author of the criminal comment is still publishing his columns at another website and that nobody initiated any legal proceedings against this person. I am not asking for much; I just want the evidence presented to court to be investigated. With today's possibilities is cannot be very difficult to understand that I am not the person who wrote that comment. I hope that the parties in and outside the parliament will not remain impassive to this issue".

Another problematic topic of the case file is the Turkish Criminal Law (TCK) that stipulates imprisonment for charges of "insult". The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers on the other hand decreed that a compensation fine should be the preferred legal solution for this kind of problems.

However, the TCK foresees prison sentences for charges of "insulting the President", "insulting a public official by reason of his duty" and "insult".

The reader comment was posted towards the end of 2008 at a time when the parliament discussed the internet campaign "I apologize to the Armenians". The campaign referred to the events of 1915, when, so many Armenians and also an increasing number of Turks say, millions of Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire were forcibly sent into exile. Many people starved, die of exhaustion or were killed by gangs.

Republican People's Party Deputy Canan Arıtman opposed statements that suggested tolerating Gül's legal action and said, "You will see once you look into the ethnic roots of his mother's family". Her statement was criticized by rights advocators and intellectuals. (EÖ/VK)