Zaman, Turkey
Jan 26 2007

Pressure Mounts on Government to Amend Article 301

Friday , 26 January 2007

Turkey’s leading business group and a European rights watchdog have
raised concerns over a penal code article, increasing pressure on the
government to amend the infamous law after a Turkish-Armenian
journalist tried under it was shot dead by a teenage assailant.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said Turkey
should scrap Article 301 — which makes it a crime to insult Turkey’s
identity, state institutions and security forces — from its penal
code. The existence of this measure, which judicially limits freedom
of expression, only validates legal and other attacks against
journalists, a resolution passed by the assembly said.
In İstanbul, Mustafa Koç, a senior leader of the Turkish
Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD),
complained resistance to changing Article 301 of the Turkish Penal
Code "feeds pessimism" about the future of the country.

Article 301 has long been criticized by the European Union for
restricting freedom of expression. Many nongovernmental organizations
also slam the law, under which numerous intellectuals have ended up
in the court for "insulting Turkishness." According to critics, the
law fuels hard-line nationalism and contributed to the murder of
Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish editor of bilingual Agos newspaper.

But pressure has grown even higher since Dink was shot dead by a
17-year-old gunman outside his office in downtown İstanbul last
Friday. The last article Dink penned before his death was itself a
strong appeal for the amendment of Article 301; Dink wrote he was
suffering because he had been convicted for insulting Turkishness and
spoke of the death threats he received for this.

"My computer’s memory is loaded with sentences full of hatred and
threats," Dink wrote. "I am just like a pigeon. … I look around to
my left and right, in front and behind me as much as it does. My head
is just as active."
The government has signaled readiness to change the controversial law
but has taken no concrete step so far, saying it is awaiting
proposals from nongovernmental organizations and looking for
consensus on how it should be changed.

State Minister Ali Babacan, also Turkey’s chief EU negotiator,
reiterated yesterday that the government was ready to change Article
301 as, he said, the government was also not happy with the way it
was implemented. He added, though, amendments to the law would
require consensus, something difficult to achieve.

But the NGOs say they have already offered verbal proposals on how
the article should be changed, tossing the ball into the government’s
court for possible amendments. Dink, widely acknowledged as a voice
for understanding and reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, was
given a six-month suspended prison sentence for an article he wrote
about the alleged genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman
Empire in eastern Anatolia. A number of other intellectuals,
including Nobel winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, have also been tried
under the same article.

Some of the mourners at Dink’s funeral, which attracted up to 100,000
people, carried black-and-white banners reading "Murderer 301." Ogün
Samast, the main suspect in Dink’s murder, reportedly said he had
killed Dink because he insulted "Turkish blood."

TÜSİAD leaders, addressing a regular convention of the group,
denounced the killing of Dink. "This revived memories of those eras
when Turkey was plagued with political murders," said Ömer
Sabancı, executive board chairman of TÜSİAD, adding that
the murder should not be seen as an individual reaction.

"It is clear that this killing has the potential of producing results
that could change the position Turkey has in international arena,"
Sabancı said. "To say it more clearly, this attack may create
the conditions that would make it possible to reverse the progress
Turkey has achieved in the area of freedoms and to cut Turkey’s links
with the West and make it an inward-looking country."