ERDOGAN CONTRADICTS MINISTER ON REFORM

Gulf Times
Jan 9 2008
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ANKARA: Turkey’s prime minister, contradicting his justice minister,
said yesterday that parliament would not this week consider planned
changes to a law used to prosecute writers that the European Union
wants amended.

The EU, which Ankara hopes to join, says tackling article 301 of
Turkey’s penal code is a litmus test of the large Muslim but secular
country’s commitment to political reforms.

The article makes it a crime to insult "Turkishness" and has been
used to prosecute dozens of writers and journalists, including Nobel
Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk.

Asked whether the article would be changed this week, Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters: "No. At the moment our work
(on the article) is continuing. After the work has finished … At
the moment there is nothing."

Earlier, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said the work on the new
text had been completed. On Monday, Sahin said the revised article
would be sent to parliament this week.

The apparent delay is a measure of the sensitivity of the issue for
Erdogan’s ruling AK Party government as it fends off attacks from
nationalist parties and tries to avoid the impression it is bowing
to EU pressure.

"To discuss changing this article will create new tensions in today’s
conditions," Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist People’s Party
(MHP), said yesterday.

"For us, changing this article means blackening the honourable history
of Turkey … and rewarding those who are seeking a chance to insult
Turkey’s national and moral values."

The article has been used especially against writers such as Pamuk
commenting on the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915-16.

Turkey denies claims by Armenians and many Western historians that
the killings constituted a systematic genocide.

Under the government’s proposal, officials say, the justice ministry
will in future have to give permission for cases to be opened under
article 301, a move that should prevent nationalist prosecutors with
their own political agenda exploiting the law. – Reuters