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EU Welcomes Turkey Constitutional Court Rulings on Hrant Dink, Hate Speech Cases

The European Union has welcomed two recent rulings of the Turkish Constitutional Court regarding hate speech on the grounds of sexual orientation and an investigation into the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, reports Today's Zaman.

In a ruling on July 17, the Constitutional Court found that the investigation in the Dink murder case violated the principle of effective investigation. In the second key ruling also issued last week, the court — assessing an application from a lawyer for an LGBT organization — confirmed that hate speech concerning sexual orientation is an offense.

“These rulings touch upon important issues in Turkey and they constitute further steps in consolidating democratic principles in the Turkish society,” EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy Stefan Füle said in a statement late on Friday.

“We expect that the standards set in these two rulings will be guiding the judiciary and administration while deciding future similar cases, in line with the European Convention of Human Rights [ECHR] and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR],” Füle said.

Having reviewed an application filed by the Dink family, the Constitutional Court established that the murder investigation had not been conducted effectively and that judicial authorities failed to properly inform the family about developments in the case.

Dink, the late editor-in-chief of Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot and killed in broad daylight on Jan. 19, 2007, by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in Istanbul. Evidence discovered since then has led to claims that the murder was linked to the “deep state,” a term that refers to a shadowy group of military and civilian bureaucrats believed to have links with organized crime.

Although it has been more than seven years since the assassination, no satisfactory outcome has been produced by the trial.