Reporter Irfan Aktan quoted Piling, a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a Kurdish rebel group that has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984, in a long article he published last September in a Turkish magazine about divisions within the PKK between hawks and doves.

"He points to the hand grenades strapped to his belt. ‘There is no point in talking. These should do the talking,'" Aktan wrote, quoting Piling.

In early June, an Istanbul court found Aktan guilty of "making propaganda for a terror organization" and sentenced him first to 18 months. Later, because he had been "well-behaved" in court, the sentenced was reduced to 15 months.

Aktan's use of Piling's statements, the judge ruled -- along with quotes from another PKK member, and mention of a pro-PKK magazine -- constituted a "clear incitement to violence." The court ordered the magazine that published the piece, Express, to pay a fine of 16,000 lira (about $10,000).

"Citing other people's opinions: isn't that what journalism is all about?" Aktan asked rhetorically, expressing "surprise" at the verdict.

In a separate trial on the same day, three members of a pro-Kurdish daily were sentenced to seven and a half years in prison each under the same article of the Anti-Terrorism Law.

A signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Turkey was subject to heavy Western criticism in 2006 and 2007, when leading Turkish novelists Orhan Pamuk and Elif Safak were charged with "insulting Turkishness." [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].

The West lost interest when the celebrity novelists' trials ended in acquittal. Yet, as the flurry of recent media trials shows, journalists still face prosecution for doing their job. Indeed, there is evidence that courts are interpreting existing laws more stringently these days.

In 2009, according to the Independent Communications Network (BIA), a Turkish media monitoring group, 43 people, including 22 journalists, were charged under the Anti-Terror laws used against Aktan and the pro-Kurdish newspaper. In the first three months of 2010, the figures were 103 and 15 respectively.

"All the talk of harmonizing with European Union law is a tall story," said Kemal Goktas, an Ankara-based reporter who was put on trial in 2009 for a book he wrote about alleged police involvement in the murder of a prominent Turkish-Armenian editor. "Journalists may not get assassinated, like they were in the '90s, but their scope for maneuver is being reduced."

A journalist for the weekly Newsweek Turkiye, Murat Yalniz, takes a different line. "If the number of car crashes rises, it could just be because there are more cars on the road," he said. "Five years ago, every journalist had a sort of auto-control system working. Recently, debate has been much freer."

For Yalniz, the key to understanding what is happening is a word you hear the whole time in Turkey: konjonktur - the political climate.

Published in September 2009, Irfan Aktan's article came out just a week before a group of PKK militants handed themselves over to Turkish authorities, in a peace gesture that was heralded at the time as the first concrete sign that government efforts to end a 25-year Kurdish might be getting somewhere. [For background see EuarsiaNet’s archive].

In the months before the arrival of the PKK delegation, Turkey's media had debated the Kurdish issue with unprecedented openness.

In the 1990s, journalists interviewing PKK leaders faced long prison sentences. But when a leading Turkish columnist published a three-day interview with the current PKK chief last May, Turkey's Interior Minister Besir Atalay said "we are following everything very carefully, noting everything very carefully."

Speaking in parliament a month after the PKK group surrendered, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told deputies that "the search for dialogue and compromise is the most fundamental aspect of democracy." Now, everything has changed. Thirty members of the PKK peace delegation went on trial June 17 on charges of charges of "making propaganda for a terrorist organization."

By late 2009, it was already clear that the "Kurdish opening" was in jeopardy, derailed by the vastly different expectations and mindsets of Turks and Kurds. Now it looks finished completely. In mid-June, the PKK claimed responsibility for a 31 May attack that killed seven Turkish soldiers and announced that it was returning to war.

With his lawyers preparing to appeal, Irfan Aktan doesn't know whether to be more upset by the prospect of jail, or the fact that his observations about the strength of a hard-line faction inside the PKK turned out to be true. "Last year, it was already clear that getting the PKK to put down its guns would not be easy, despite all the optimism," he says. "I tried to carry on being hopeful. The court has made it clear that I was hoping in vain."