TUSIAD TO ANKARA: IF YOU DON’T GET RID OF ARTICLE 301, AT LEAST CHANGE IT

Hurriyet, Turkey
Feb 27 2007

The new head of the Turkish Association of Businessmen and
Industrialists, (TUSIAD), Arzuhan Dogan Sabanci, has written a second
letter to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging him to push for
changes to controversial Turkish Penal Code article 301.

The letter, which was sent in mid-February, recalls the murder of
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul, calling for "a plan
of action" to protect freedom of expression in Turkey. The letter
stresses that the first step in such a "plan of action" should
be changes made to article 301, which makes it a crime to insult
"Turkishness, the Turkish Republic, or the Turkish Parliament."

Defenders of the article insist that the actual implementation of
the article depends wholly on the interpretive skills of the judge or
judges in cases where people are being tried on charges of violating
article 301. The TUSIAD letter notes that if article 301 is not to
be completely lifted from the Turkish Penal Code, it should at least
go through serious changes.

The first letter from TUSIAD to the administration on the subject of
article 301 was written by former TUSIAD head Omer Sabanci, and was
sent to Ankara in the immediate run-up to the trial of writer Elif
Safak, who faced charged of violating the controversial article.

Safak was acquitted on all charges during the first hour of her trial.