After a police raid on a home in Ümraniye, a suburb of Istanbul, the secret weapons arsenal found has turned out to belong to retired petty officer Oktay Yildirim, one of the founders of the ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye Association (KMD).

In the case that had been opened against murdered journalist Hrant Dink for stating that he believed an Armenian genocide had taken place, the prosecution has demanded that the owner and the manager of Dinks Agos newspaper be punished under Article 301

After a police raid on a home in Ümraniye, a suburb of Istanbul, the secret weapons arsenal found has turned out to belong to retired petty officer Oktay Yildirim, one of the founders of the ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye Association (KMD).

The independent candidates of the left and of the pro-Kurdish DTP have got clear ideas about their mission, should they be elected into parliament. Tüzel, independent candidate in Izmir, and Geylani and Ike, all see the need for more democracy.

Today, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is to start hearing the appeals of several Turkish journalists who have been penalised with prison sentences or publishing bans for their news and articles.

The 3rd Heavy Penal Court in Van has decided not to go along with the demand of the Supreme Court of Appeals that the Semdinli case be tried before a military court. However, it has accepted the demand to reopen the trial. The next hearing is 11 July.

Two women, Ayse Tükrükcü and Saliha Ermez, both former sex workers, are preparing to stand as independent candidates in Istanbul. In Turkey, there are 68 brothels but only 32 womens shelters, and one of their aims is to increase the number of the latter.

After the murder of journalist Hrant Dink, the trials against him under Article 301 were dropped. However, other journalists from the Armenian newspaper Agos, Sarkis Seropyan, Arat Dink and Karin Karakasli are still on trial. Their next hearing is 14 June

An international conference on freedom of expression in Turkey and the EU, organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and hosted at Bilgi University in Istanbul, participants discussed threats to freedom of expression and compared the situation.

Local journalists in the three south-eastern provinces which have been declared temporary security zones (Siirt, Sirnak and Hakkari) have said that daily life is not much changed, but that a general increase in violence worries people.

After the e-warning of 27 April this year, the General Staff has again published a controversial article on its website. Again late at night, and this time the website called on the noble Turkish people to take part in a mass reflex against terror.

A penal court in Adana, south of Turkey, has sentenced three members of the Adana branch of the Association for Human Rights (IHD) to imprisonment for criticising the Return to Life operations of December 2000.