Medeni Ayhan, a former lawyer for jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, said during a speech he gave at a gathering of the Ankara Bar Association in 2004 that a genocide had been committed against Armenians by the Ottomans in the early 20th century. His statements drew reactions at the time from other lawyers as well as the military, and then-Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ filed a criminal complaint against Ayhan. The case went to the Ankara 10th High Criminal Court, which after nearly six years ruled last Thursday that Ayhan’s remarks fell under freedom of expression and acquitted him of the charges against him.Ayhan again sparked controversy with a speech he gave at the bar association in 2008 when he, speaking on the topic of Kurds and Kurdish rights in Turkey, referred to a past “genocide of Alevis” in Turkey. This time, a group of lawyers tried to take Ayhan to court over his comments. Their efforts were stopped, however, by the Justice Ministry, which is responsible for granting permission for such court cases to be opened. The Justice Ministry recently rejected a prosecutor’s request to open a case against Ayhan, citing as its reason a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights that stipulates that even if remarks are shocking, as long as they do not incite violence then they must be tolerated out of respect for freedom of speech. The lawyers filing the complaint against Ayhan, nevertheless, have the option to appeal this decision.
Speaking to the press about the two decisions that have been made in the past two weeks regarding his comments on controversial topics, Ayhan said: “İsmail Beşikçi and other intellectuals like us have for years been dealt prison sentences of dozens of years. In the end, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Turkey for this. In this way, space for freedom of thought has been created. This space for freedom is the result of a decades-long, determined struggle.”
Some observers say the two decisions mark a change in the stance of state institutions with regard to the freedom of expression as well as a reflection of recent government efforts to address the problems -- both historic and current -- faced by ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey.
