ISTANBUL, Jan 28: A Turkish court imposed a suspended 15 month jail sentence on Monday on a professor for insulting modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in a case likely to draw European Union criticism.

The court in the western port city of Izmir sentenced Prof Atilla Yayla over comments he made at a 2006 conference in which he questioned whether Ata’s beliefs contributed to Turkey’s progress.

Yayla, a liberal who teaches political science at Ankara’s Gazi University, had also asked why pictures and statues of Ataturk are still so ubiquitous in modern Turkey. Insulting Ataturk’s memory is a crime in Turkey.

Yayla’s university suspended him from teaching after the comments first emerged in the media.

The case is the latest in a series of prosecutions which have drawn attention to limits on freedom of expression in Turkey and has attracted criticism from human rights groups and from the EU, which Ankara hopes to join.—Reuters