_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Turkey_______________
Not guilty of “inciting hatred”
Priest charged for mention of Armenian genocide
A Syrian-rite Catholic priest who had been accused of “inciting hatred” because he spoke of the historic genocide of his people by Turks was acquitted by a Turkish court on April 5.
Father Yusuf Akbulut had been arrested last October and faced between one and three years in prison if he had been convicted under article 312 of the Turkish penal code, which criminalizes “inciting hatred by showing up differences of class, race, religion, creed, or region.” He had been quoted in a major newspaper as saying Syrian-rite Christians had been systematically killed by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century. That would coincide with the timing of a similar genocide of Armenians.
The arrest of the priest had led to warnings that Turkey’s bid to join the European Union could face obstacles based on human-rights worries.
Father Akbulut said before his acquittal that his remarks had been taken out of context. “I am not a historian, I am not a politician,” he said. “I was not presenting a new idea. I only repeated what I had been told by my elders.”
There are now only about 3,000 Syrian Christians remaining in Turkey, mainly in the southeast of the country, where the Kurdish population predominates. The Syrian Catholic Church is now centered in Lebanon.