(RSF/IFEX) – The Turkish army’s former chief of staff, Hüseyin Kivrikoglu, has decided not to appeal a Paris court’s ruling rejecting his lawsuit against RSF over the inclusion of his image in a photographic display of press freedom predators on a world map put up by RSF at Paris’s Saint-Lazare station on 3 May 2002, […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The Turkish army’s former chief of staff, Hüseyin Kivrikoglu, has decided not to appeal a Paris court’s ruling rejecting his lawsuit against RSF over the inclusion of his image in a photographic display of press freedom predators on a world map put up by RSF at Paris’s Saint-Lazare station on 3 May 2002, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.
In a 29 January 2003 ruling against Kivrikoglu’s lawsuit, in which the Turkish army’s former chief of staff had claimed that the display caused unwarranted harm to his public image, the court ordered him to pay RSF’s court costs and 2,000 euros (approx. US$2,270) in damages.
RSF has decided to hand over the sum to the families of Mustafa Benli, Kemal Evcimen, Memik Horuz and Nureddin Sirin, who are all currently imprisoned in Turkey for their part in publishing or broadcasting news that the authorities considered to be a threat to “public order” or “state unity”, but which was entirely within their right to freedom and diversity of expression.
To highlight the systematic harassment of Turkish journalists who dare to criticise the army and the fact that the army is accorded a permanent right to influence the country’s political life and press, RSF included a photograph of Kivrikoglu’s successor, General Hilmi Ozkok, in its 3 May display of 42 international press freedom predators, on the occasion of Word Press Freedom Day 2003.
