Turkish journalist Temel Demirer first fell afoul of the law when he stated, a day after Hrant Dink had been murdered, that : : “Hrant Dink was not killed because he was Armenian but because he said that there had been an Armenian genocide.”

For this, Demirer was sentenced under Article 301, with the prosecution demanding 2 years imprisonment.

At that time, changes in the controversial Article 301 had also reduced the maximal sentence for “denigrating the Turkish Nation, the Turkish Republic, its government or government institutions” to two years.

This trial had been postponed provided that, following Provisional Articles 1 and 2 of Law 6352, he would not “commit a new crime under Clause 1 within the next three years”.

Now, Demirer is to be retried for violating the same Artcicle 301.

According to the police, after the first trial, Demirer declared the following in front of the court building:

“If I don’t say ‘There was an Armenian genocide in Turkey’ or ‘the state in Turkey is a murderer’ for the next three years, I will be acquitted. Right now, five minutes after the trial, without waiting for three years, I say, ‘The state is the murderer of Hrant Dink’. I also say, ‘There was an Armenian genocide in this country’. If the court, security forces or the Ministry of Injustice that postponed my trial do not open another trial, they will be committing a crime.”

Levent Kanat, Demirer’s lawyer, told Bianet that they had learned about the new inquiry in the news and had not received an official notification. For Kanat, the investigation is the result of a mentality that has not changed: “They say they are becoming more democratic, but that is not true.”