Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Turkey's top rights activist on trial over Armenian genocide
by AFP
Posted: Monday, March 05, 2001 08:27 pm CST

ANKARA, March 1 (AFP) - Turkey's leading human rights activist Akin Birdal went on trial here Thursday for allegedly accusing the Ottomans of genocide against the Armenian minority, Anatolia news agency reported.

Birdal, 53, is charged with "openly slandering and humiliating the Turkish nation" in remarks he allegedly made to a German panel calling on Turkey to apologize to Armenians for genocide. He faces up to a six-year jail term if convicted. Birdal, who was present in court, denied making the remarks. "I talked about the injustices inflicted on different minorities in Turkey at different times in history, but I did not say that Turkey should apologize for the Armenian genocide," he told the court.

The trial was adjourned until a later date, Anatolia said. A former head of Turkey's Human Rights Association, Birdal was only released from jail in September after serving a 10-month sentence for sedition over his appeals for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict.

The activist, who was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in May 1998, had previously served a year in jail for activities deemed supportive of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party which waged a 15-year armed campaign against Turkey for Kurdish self-rule.

Turkey is extremely sensitive to claims of genocide against Armenians during the dissolution years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenia claims that some 1.5 million Armenians were killed in 1915 while Turkey estimates 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks died in internal fighting. Ankara was angered by France's recent adoption of a bill recognizing the killings as genocide, and has threatened economic reprisals.

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