Doğu Perinçek

In 2007, a ruling by a Swiss court made him the first person to receive a criminal conviction for denial of the Armenian genocide. He is a known denier of the Armenian genocide according to the Swiss-Armenian Association. The case was ultimately appealed to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, which in a 15 October 2015 judgment did not rule on the veracity of the Armenian genocide but ruled in favour of Perinçek on grounds of free speech.

The Grand Chamber ruled in favour of Perinçek on 15 October 2015. In a statement issued by Armenia's counsel, Geoffrey Robertson and Amal Clooney said they were pleased the Court had endorsed their argument on behalf of Armenia. The judgment did not dispute the fact of the Armenian genocide and recognised Armenians' right under European law to have their dignity respected and protected, including the recognition of a communal identity forged through suffering following the annihilation of more than half their race by the Ottoman Turks.

Since 2014, he has been an influential informal foreign policy adviser to the Turkish government. His influence on foreign policy has been significant. His foreign policy position seen as largely is anti-West and pro-China.

In Turkey, on 21 March 2008, Perinçek was detained as part of an investigation into the alleged organization named Ergenekon. This followed the arrest and detention of 39 suspects in January 2008 during raids targeting Ergenekon. On 5 August 2013 Perinçek was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment. He was released on 10 March 2014 together with many other prisoners. Perinçek has spent a total of 15 years of his life in prison at different times.

Perinçek is notable as being the first person to be convicted by a court of law for denial of the Armenian genocide. On 9 March 2007, he was found guilty by a Swiss district court of conscious violation of Swiss laws against genocide denial with a racist motivation and was fined CHF 12,000. The case was a result of Perinçek's description of the Armenian genocide as "an international lie" at a demonstration in Lausanne on 25 July 2005; he later clarified to a Swiss court that there had been massacres, but reiterated his belief that these did not constitute genocide. The verdict was confirmed by the Vaud cantonal appeal court on 19 June, and by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland on 12 December 2007. Perinçek announced he will take recourse to the European Court of Human Rights. In December 2013 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland violated the principle of freedom of expression. The court said that "Mr Perincek was making a speech of a historical, legal and political nature in a contradictory debate". After the ruling the government of Switzerland announced its decision to appeal the court's ruling. On 3 June 2014 the European Court of Human Rights accepted the appeal to move on to the Grand Chamber to clarify the scope available to Swiss authorities in applying the Swiss Criminal Code to combat racism. A preliminary hearing on the appeal by Switzerland was held on 28 January 2015.

In 1990, Perinçek was arrested and put in Diyarbakır Prison for three months after the issue of the Law of Censorship and Exile. In the 1990s he was involved with the founding of the short-lived Socialist Party and then the Workers' Party. He was the Workers' Party's leader from its foundation in 1992 until it was rebranded in 2015 as the Patriotic Party, which he has led since.

Perinçek was arrested again after the 1980 military coup and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was released in March 1985. In 1987 he was involved with the launch of the weekly news magazine 2000'e Doğru. In 1991, while he was editor-in-chief of 2000'e Doğru, he went to Lebanon to meet with Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Perinçek became involved in left-wing revolutionary politics in the 1960s. In 1968 he was elected president of the Idea Clubs Federation (Fikir Kulüpleri Federasyonu, FKF, later Dev-Genç), a group of left-wing youth, and adopted a pro-Chinese, pro-Mao Zedong stance. Perinçek was involved in the relaunch of the magazine Aydınlık in 1968, supporting the Luminosity movement. Due to political disagreements between Mahir Çayan's followers and Perinçek's faction, Aydınlık split into two journals (Perinçek's group published under the name Proleter Devrimci Aydınlık). In 1969 he founded the illegal Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİİKP). He was arrested after the 1971 military coup and sentenced to 20 years in prison, but was released in July 1974. In 1978 the Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİKP) was founded as a legal successor to the TİİKP.

Doğu Perinçek (Turkish pronunciation: [doːu peɾinˈtʃek]; born 17 June 1942) is a Turkish politician, doctor of law and former communist revolutionary who has been chairman of the left-wing nationalist Patriotic Party (Turkish: Vatan Partisi, VP) since 2015. He was also a member of the Talat Pasha Committee, an organization that denies the Armenian genocide. Politically, he favors close relations with China and is strongly anti-American.

Doğu Perinçek was born in Gaziantep in 1942 to Sadık Perinçek of Apçağa, Kemaliye, and Lebibe Olcaytu of Balaban, Darende. Sadık Perinçek was the Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court and a parliamentary deputy of the Justice Party (AP), the predecessor of the True Path Party (DYP). Perinçek attended Ankara Sarar primary school, Atatürk Lycee, and Bahçelievler Deneme high school. He interrupted his university education to study German at the Goethe Institute in Germany, going on to finish Ankara University's Law faculty, and working as an assistant lecturer in public law. He then completed a doctorate at the Otto-Suhr-Institut in Germany.

The Grand Chamber also made clear that the court was not required to determine whether the massacres and mass deportations suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 onwards can be characterised as genocide within the meaning of that term under international law. It also added that it has no authority to make legally binding pronouncements, one way or the other, on this point. Furthermore, 7 judges, including then-President of the European Court of Human Rights Dean Spielmann stated in their dissenting opinion that it is self-evident that the massacres and deportations suffered by the Armenian people constituted genocide and that the Armenian genocide is a clearly established historical fact.