His Excellency Mesut Yilmaz
Prime Minster of the Republic of Turkey
Prime Minister’s Office
Ankara
Turkey

Vienna, 30 January 1998

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI) the global network of editors and media executives from newspapers, magazines, broadcasting organisations and news agencies in over 100 countries, strongly condemns the imprisonment of Haluk Gerger, a columnist for the daily Ülkede Gündem.

On 26 January 1998, Haluk Gerger was jailed in Güdül Prison, Ankara, following the Court of Cassation’s ratification of a one-year sentence, which was handed down by the Court of Appeals in December 1997. Gerger had been convicted under Article 8 of Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law of spreading separatist propaganda in an article he wrote for the 15 December 1993 edition of the now-defunct Özgür Gündem, a pro-Kurdish daily. He was also fined 208 million Turkish lira (US$ 1,000).

IPI believes that Haluk Gerger has been imprisoned for having carried out his professional duties as a journalist, in violation of the right to freedom of opinion and expression as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We strongly urge Your Excellency to do everything in your power to secure his release from prison. We further ask you to fulfil your pledge, made last July to an international delegation of press freedom organisations, to initiate legal reform of Turkish laws under which journalists can still be imprisoned for what they write.
We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director