Bloomberg
Jan 28 2007
Turkey May Repeal Law on `Insulting Turkishness,’ Gul Says
By Gregory Viscusi
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — Turkey will weaken or repeal a law against
insulting the nation that has been used to prosecute writers and
intellectuals, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said.
“We will change that law,” Gul said in an interview yesterday at
annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Asked if the change could come before Presidential elections, Gul
answered “it could come even before the elections.”
Turkey’s parliament will pick a new president in May. Gul’s governing
Justice and Development Party isn’t slated to face legislative
elections until November, though some politicians have called for
bringing those elections forward. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
and Gul, who is also foreign minister, are possible presidential
candidates. Neither has declared his intentions.
Article 301 of the country’s penal code outlaws “insulting
Turkishness.” That law was used to convict Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink to a six-month suspended prison term in July
for a 2004 article he wrote about the massacre of Armenians by
Ottoman Turkish troops during World War I.
Dink was murdered Jan. 19 by a teenage nationalist. Tens of thousands
of Turks attended his funeral, which turned into a protest against
Article 301. Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk and other Turkish writers
have been prosecuted under the law, though Dink’s was the sole
conviction. The charges are generally brought by lawyers linked to
nationalist movements, not by the government.
Armenians say at least 1.5 million of their people were slaughtered
in a genocide from 1915. Turkey says the number is inflated and both
Turks and Armenians were killed during ethnic clashes.