TURKEY’S NEW ECHR JUDGE CALLS FOR CHANGES TO CONTROVERSIAL LAW ON FREE SPEECH

NTV MSNBC
Jan 23 2008
Turkey

Karakas was elected to the ECHR on Tuesday, becoming the first female
Turkish jurist to sit on the panel of judges.

ANKARA – Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which deals with
the crime of insulting Turkish identity, poses a restriction on
freedom of expression and must be amended, according to Turkey’s new
representative on the panel of judges of the European Court of Human
Rights (ECHR).

Speaking in an interview Wednesday, the day after she was elected as
a ECHR judge, Professor Ayse Isil Karakas, said there are problems
related to the implementation of Article 301, and that these had been
highlighted in European Union reports.

"When Article 301 was first established, authorities said that its
implementation should be observed," She said. "The implementation
did not yield desired results. There are lots of cases filed under
Article 301. As a jurist, I believe that Article 301 must be amended."

Article 301 has been used to prosecute a number of Turkey’s leading
authors and journalists, including Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan
Pamuk and Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist and editor who
was gunned down in the street in Istanbul last year.