Brussels, 13/07/2006 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said he was “disappointed” by the decision of the Court of Cassation in Turkey to confirm the six-month suspended prison sentence for Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist from Turkey, accused of insulting “Turkishness”. Mr Dink, Director of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, in Istanbul, will go to prison if condemned for similar offences within the next five years. He had been sentenced in October 2005 by an Istanbul court for an article on massacres committed by the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia against Armenians between 1915and 1917. “I am disappointed by this judgement which limits the exercise of freedom of expression in Turkey”, Mr Rehn states in a press release. This was the first final judgement from the Turkish highest judicial authority on interpretation of Article 301 of the new Criminal Code. Fearing that the judgement would create a precedent for the many other cases relating to Article 301, Mr Rehn urged Turkish authorities to “amend Article 301 and other vaguely formulated articles in order to guarantee freedom of expression in Turkey”. The Commissioner also pointed out that freedom of expression is not only a core aspect of democracy but also a “key principle” of political criteria for EU membership. Respect of these political criteria by Turkey will be assessed in the next monitoring report that the Commission will present this autumn, Mr Rehn warns.