TURKEY SET TO PASS KEY FREEDOM OF SPEECH REFORM
By Elitsa Vucheva
EUobserver.com
April 9 2008
Belgium
The Turkish parliament is next week likely to pass a bill softening
a law which sets limits on freedom of the speech by criminalizing
insults to "Turkishness".
One article in the country’s penal code – article 301 – currently
imposes up to three years in prison for such an insult.
Many Turkish intellectuals and writers have been tried under the
article, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.
"I believe we will push the amendment to Article 301 through parliament
next week," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday
(8 April), according to press agencies.
Late on Monday, the Turkish government submitted its draft proposal
for amendments to the parliament, suggesting, among other things, that
the country’s president should give his consent before prosecutors
can launch cases in that field.
It also proposes that the vague term "Turkishness" be replaced by
"Turkish nation", and the prison time envisaged be decreased from
three to two years while the sentence could be suspended or converted
to a fine, AFP reports.
The move comes just days before a visit to Turkey on Thursday and
Friday by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU
enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn.
The EU has repeatedly called on EU candidate Turkey to "repeal or
amend without delay" the controversial article as a prerequisite to
join the bloc.
The article has mostly been used against those who refuse to follow
Turkey’s official line on the killings of Armenians during World War I,
by for example referring to the events as "genocide" – a term Ankara
categorically rejects.
The amendment is expected to be adopted without difficulty in the
country’s parliament, as the governing Justice and Development (AKP)
party maintains a majority of 340 deputies in the 550-seat parliament.
Turkey has been an EU candidate country since 1999, and launched
accession talks with the bloc in October 2005. Progress has been slow
and it has so far opened six out the 35 chapters needed in order for
the accession negotiations to be closed.