What is Dangerous about Minority Report?
Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Kaboglu and Prof. Dr. Baskin Oran had been tried for, and then acquitted of, “inciting to hatred and hostility” with the publication of the Minority Rights and Cultural Rights Working Group report. A court of appeal has now overturned the acquittal. Kaboglu is sure that the decree will be overturned in Strasbourg (i.e. at the European Court of Human Rights), but his deepfelt wish was that it would be overturned in Ankara. Little hope for freedom of expression According to the professor, hope for the freedom of speech existed in judges such as the Penal Judge Avni Mis, who had decreed the initial acquittal, as well as Appeals Judge Hamdi Yaver Aktan, who had voted against overturning the acquittal. Kaboglu added, “A change of attitude will take a long time.” Yavuz Önen, the president of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TIHV), which had put its signature to the report, protested against the fact that two academics could be tried for up to five years imprisonment for
