ANKARA, 23 December 2005 — An Istanbul court yesterday fined a writer for insulting the Turkish state in a book on the evacuation of Kurdish, Armenian and Syriac Christian villages and a publisher for an article on Turkey’s policy on Iraq.

The verdicts were issued amid controversy over Article 301 of a revised penal code, which allows prosecutors to pursue cases against writers and scholars for “insulting Turkish identity”.

The most high profile case so far has been against best-selling Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who told a Swiss newspaper that no one dared discuss the alleged massacre of a million Armenians 90 years ago nor the deaths of 30,000 Kurds in recent years.

The prosecutions have raised concern within the European Union over freedom of expression in Turkey, which won EU accession talks status on Oct. 3.

The government has said it will not be rushed into changing the article and needs time for new laws to take root.

The Istanbul court first jailed writer Zulkuf Kisanak and publisher Aziz Ozer for five months but later reduced the sentences to fines.

Kisanak was fined 3,000 lira ($2,220) and Ozer 6,000 lira ($4,440) for publishing two articles which criticized Turkey’s backing of the US-led war in Iraq.

“I was tried under Article 301 of the penal code for insulting the state,” Kisanak told Reuters. His lawyer said he had appealed the court’s ruling.

Kisanak said his book “Lost Villages” told the tragedy of people in 14 villages in eastern Turkey which were evacuated in the last 100 years, and especially during fighting between outlawed Kurdish separatist rebels and the army in the 1990s.

Turkish forces have fought an armed campaign by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the southeast since 1984. The United States and the EU list the PKK as a foreign terrorist organization.

Other Turkish writers and scholars face charges for “insulting Turkish identity,” state institutions and the revered founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Such prosecutions rarely end in imprisonment and more often result in fines, acquittals or reprieves.