Twelve former members of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were each sentenced to five months in prison on Thursday for condemning the Armenian Genocide, sparking debates on free speech.
The charge was “publicly degrading the Turkish Republic” following their statement on the Armenian Genocide made on 24 April 2021. The statement, which called for a confrontation with the “shame of the Armenian Genocide”, led to a legal battle highlighting issues of freedom of expression and historical acknowledgment in Turkey.
During the final hearing, lawyers for the accused argued that the case was an unjustified infringement on freedom of expression, lacking legal grounds and failing to meet the criteria of a legitimate aim and necessity in a democratic society. They emphasised the absence of specific intent to commit the crime in the accused’s statement. One of the lawyers, Senem Doğanoğlu, noted that Alp Altınörs, one of the accused, was in prison at the time of the statement for a different case, challenging the coherence of the accusations.
Lawyer Ali Cangı further argued the case’s lack of substance by pointing out that the events of 1915 predate the establishment of the Turkish Republic, making the condemnation of actions by the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) and its Special Organisation (Teşkilatı Mahsusa) irrelevant to defaming the modern Turkish state. This argument underscored the anachronistic application of law and the absence of a legal basis for attributing blame to the Ottoman Empire’s actions to the Republic of Turkey.
The court’s decision to sentence the former HDP members, taking into consideration the manner of the crime, the significance of the subject and the supposed severity of the damage caused, was reduced from six to five months after applying a sentence reduction, which was then suspended.
