TURKISH LEGISLATORS CONSIDER CHANGES TO LAW RESTRICTING FREE SPEECH
PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung), Austria
April 29 2008
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkish legislators were debating a proposal
Tuesday to soften a law restricting freedom of speech that has
been used to prosecute Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk and other
intellectuals.
A vote on the proposed amendment to Article 301 of Turkey’s penal
code, which bars insults to the Turkish identity or the country’s
institutions, was expected later Tuesday or early Wednesday. The
ruling party, which proposed the change, has a majority in the 550-seat
parliament and the amendment was expected to pass.
Turkey says close to 7,000 people have been prosecuted under that
law and its precursor since 2003. A total of 745 were convicted in
that period.
The European Union has been pressing Turkey to abolish or overhaul
the law as part of Turkey’s campaign for EU membership.
The opposition, resentful of what it calls EU interference in Turkey’s
affairs, wants the law to remain intact.
"I am making this call for the last time: come back from the brink of
making a mistake. Do not pave the way for insults to Turkish values,"
Devlet Bahceli, who heads the Nationalist Action Party, said prior
to the debate.
Bahceli also called for a referendum to allow the people to decide
"whether they want or don’t want Turkish values and Turkey’s honorable
history to be insulted.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been criticized
for slow progress on changes to Article 301 and other EU-backed
reforms.
Critics say that Erdogan, whose Islamic-oriented party is facing
possible closure for allegedly violating secular principles, is now
keen to be seen to be advancing Turkey’s EU bid.
Opponents of Article 301, meanwhile, say the government-proposed
changes are only cosmetic and will have little impact on Turkey’s EU
bid. They also say there are other freedom-curbing laws in Turkey’s
penal code that need to be changed, including Turkey’s anti-terror law
and laws on crimes against the national founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Under Article 301, the maximum sentence for denigrating Turkish
identity or insulting the country’s institutions is three years in
prison. The government proposal would reduce the time to two years, and
grant a possible suspension of the sentence for first-time offenders.
Under the plan, prosecutors would need to seek the Justice Ministry’s
permission before investigating possible violations of Article 301.
Also, the article would refer to the crime of denigrating the "Turkish
nation," instead of the currently used term "Turkishness," which is
viewed as too vague.
Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist who was gunned down in 2007,
was prosecuted under Article 301 for referring to the mass killings
of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century as "genocide.
Dink’s alleged killer was a teenager influenced by extreme
nationalists, and mourners attributed his death to the atmosphere
of animosity surrounding the journalist’s legal problems. Dink had
received numerous death threats.
Pamuk, who won the Nobel literature prize in 2006, also went on trial
for comments on the mass killings of Armenians, but the charges were
later dropped.