TURKEY OFFERS TO AMEND DRACONIAN LAW

Al-Jazeera, Qatar
Nov 5 2006

The Turkish prime minister says he is ready to amend a law used to
prosecute writers, including Nobel prizewinner Orhan Pamuk, in an
attempt to head off a crisis with the EU.

"We are ready for proposals to make article 301 more concrete if there
are problems stemming from it being vague," Recep Tayyip Erdogan was
quoted by state-run Anatolian news agency as saying on Sunday.

"In order to prevent a violation of freedoms … we are studying
several options for how we can handle article 301 in harmony with
the spirit of the [EU-oriented] reforms," he said.

The article has raised questions in Europe about the country’s
commitment to freedom of speech.

The government has been split, some fearing an amendment would
lessen the centre-right government’s chances of harnessing the rising
nationalist vote in general elections next year.

Article 301

The European Commission is expected to lecture Ankara over judicial
action against journalists, scholars and writers for expressing
peaceful opinions in a progress report on November 8 on Turkey’s
European Union accession process.

The EU says article 301, which makes it a crime to insult Turkish
national identity, unfairly restricts freedom of expression and must
be changed.

It has recently been used to bring charges against Pamuk, later
dropped, and to convict journalist Hrant Dink for articles about the
mass killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.

With elections in November 2007, Erdogan’s scope for more reforms has
narrowed, especially given rising euroscepticism among Turks weary
of EU demands and suspicious that the bloc does not really want to
take in their large Muslim nation.