HDP deputy urges prosecutors to act against hate speech in Turkey

A number of examples of hate speech have turned into hate crimes in Turkey in recent weeks and no prosecutor has so far taken the initiative regarding these statements and crimes, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Istanbul deputy Garo Paylan has stated. 

"Each hate speech crime going unpunished pushes people targeted by hate speech to the 'dove's skittishness' and lays the ground for hate crimes," Paylan said on July 9 at a press conference at parliament.

"Dove's skittishness" is a phrase used by slain Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in his final article in his bilingual Agos newspaper, expressing his feeling of being terrorized just days before he was killed on Jan. 19, 2007.

Laying ground for murders

"The recent discourses aiming to create hatred and enmity against the Armenian community in Kars and Ankara and LGBTI individuals in Ankara constitute a clear and imminent threat against the right to life," Paylan said, also referring to recent attacks against Korean tourists in Istanbul, mistaken by Turkish ultranationalists for Chinese people.

"It is obvious that 'poisoned' phrases and discourses have prepared the ground for murders in Turkey's recent history," Paylan said, listing a number of incidents including the killing of Father Andrea Santoro in February 2006 as he prayed in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, as well as the killings at the Zirve Publishing House in Malatya in April 2007, when three missionaries were tied up and tortured before having their throats slit. 

'Facts'

Paylan also referred to four particular recent incidents, including when the head of the local branch of the far-right "Idealist Hearths" (Ülkü Ocaklar?), which has close links with the Nationalist Movement Party ...