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EU pressures Turkey on free speech and Cyprus

The European Commission has praised a Turkish court verdict clearing a top novelist but repeated that Ankara's laws limiting freedom of expression should be scrapped altogether, with commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso saying Brussels is "not encouraged" by the latest signals from Ankara.

Elif Shafak, one of the best-selling Turkish authors, was declared innocent by a court in Istanbul on Thursday (21 September) after having been charged with insulting "Turkishness" over comments on t...

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