TURKEY MOVES ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

EurActiv
ement/turkey-moves-freedom-speech/article-171423
A pril 8 2008
Belgium

Just days before Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso’s visit
to Ankara, the Turkish government has introduced a bill to soften a
controversial article in the country’s penal code outlawing criticism
of Turkish identity.

Brussels has identified reform of the penal code’s Article 301 as a
priority of the country’s preparations for EU accession.

Speaking to EurActiv in October last year, the EU’s enlargement
commissioner, Olli Rehn, highlighted freedom of expression as "the
first and foremost priority" for Turkey on its path to reform. "This
means that Article 301 must be repealed or revised," he said (EurActiv
23/10/07).

The main change to the so-called "Turkishness" article is that the
permission of the President would be needed to approve prosecutions
related to cases where Turkish identity or the country’s institutions
have been insulted, Turkish media reported yesterday (7 April).

The proposed amendment would also decrease the maximum punishment
from three to two years and replace the wording "denigrating Turkish
identity" with "denigrating the Turkish nation" in an effort to
eliminate the law’s vague notion of "Turkishness".

The existing Article 301 has been used as the basis of a number of
cases against authors and journalists in the last two years, including
the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and the Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, who was murdered last year because of his convictions.

The spokesperson of Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, Krisztina Nagy,
said that the Commission was monitoring the developments closely. "If
these amendments succeed in better protecting freedom of expression,
they will be welcome," she said.

The EU has repeatedly called on the government of Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan to amend or scrap the article if Turkey is to prove it is
serious in its bid to join the Union. But although the governing AKP
party has pledged to reform Article 301 many times in recent years,
its has thus far never followed up with concrete action.

The announcement could, however, be seen as part of a broader
government initiative to reaffirm its EU commitment, including a
comprehensive strategy to tackle corruption and harmonise regulations
on unions and strikes.

"Article 301 of the Turkish penal code is one of the priority areas
that needs to be addressed," an official from the Turkish Secretariat
General for EU affairs told the Turkish Daily News.

"But it is not the only one," she added, calling for six other
regulations which restrict the freedom of speech to be modified. She
also urged the Turkish Parliament to agree to the changes "as soon
as possible".

The opposition far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) said it
will oppose any changes related to Article 301. But the AKP’s clear
majority in Parliament would allow it to pass the bill without
additional votes from the opposition.

The government claims that the article’s new provisions will prevent
nationalist prosecutors from exploiting the law to serve their own
political agenda.