Turkish parliamentary commission debates proposal to soften law limiting free speech
Associated Press Worldstream
April 18, 2008 Friday 8:06 AM GMT
ANKARA Turkey — A parliamentary commission on Friday began debating
the government’s proposal to soften a law that restricts freedom of
speech and has been used to prosecute intellectuals.
Turkish lawmakers will vote next week on the amendment to Article
301 of Turkey’s penal code, and parliament as a whole could vote as
early as April 22.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development
Party commands a comfortable majority that is expected to approve
the changes.
The law, which currently makes denigrating Turkish identity or
insulting the country’s institutions punishable by up to three years
in prison, has drawn criticism from the European Union, which Turkey
wants to join.
It was used to prosecute Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk and
ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink for comments they made about
the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century.
In 2007, Dink, then editor of the minority Agos newspaper, was shot
outside his office, allegedly by a hardline nationalist teenager. His
killing led to international condemnation and debate within Turkey
about free speech.
Under the government’s proposal, the president would have to approve
any prosecution under Article 301. Also, the crime of denigrating
Turkish identity would be replaced with denigrating the "Turkish
nation" an effort to eliminate the hard-to-define "Turkishness"
now in the law.
The proposal also would decrease the maximum punishment to two years,
meaning it could be completely suspended. In Turkey, if a sentence does
not exceed two years, courts are allowed to postpone any punishment
indefinitely, unless the offender commits the same crime again.
Erdogan’s government has been criticized lately for slowing progress
on reforms required for Turkey’s EU membership goal, while focusing
on lifting a ban on Islamic-style head scarves at universities.
But the government appears to be focusing on EU reforms again since
Turkey’s top court recently agreed to hear a case on whether to ban
his Islamic-oriented party for violating the secular principles of
this predominantly Muslim country.