TURKEY ALTERS LAW CURTAILING FREE SPEECH
Deutsche Welle, Germany
April 30 2008
After years of foreign and domestic criticism, Turkey’s parliament
passed a long-awaited revision of a law that prohibits insulting
"Turkishness." But critics say the reforms do not go far enough.
Parliament voted in favor of government-backed changes to the law,
which had been used to prosecute hundreds of writers, on Wednesday,
April 30, with 250 votes for and 65 against, according to the
Anatolian state news agency. Nationalist parliament members voiced
strong opposition to the changes during the eight-hour debate.
The reforms make it illegal to insult the Turkish nation, rather than
Turkishness and cut the maximum jail term down from three to two years.
The European Union, which has long pressed Turkey to alter the law,
also had a tepid response to the change. EU Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso earlier this month called it a "step in the
right direction."
The EU has repeatedly warned Turkey that respect for free speech
will be a test of its commitment to align with the bloc’s democracy
norms. The 27-member EU is currently holding accession talks with
Ankara in six of the 35 policy areas that EU candidate countries are
required to conform to.
Turkish Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said there would still be
restrictions on insulting Turkey.
"With this change, it is not a question of letting people insult
Turkishness freely," he told parliament.
Few pleased with changes
Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink, who was shot dead by an
ultra-nationalist youth last year, had been convicted under article
301. 2006 Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk has also been persecuted
under it for comments he made on the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks in 1915-16.
Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) accused the
government of betraying the country’s identity, and instead pandering
to EU demands that it reform laws prohibiting Turks from insulting
their nation.
The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, whose members often end
up in court for expressing views on the Kurdish separatist movement,
wanted to abolish the article.
Before the parliament voted, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli told party
members that reforming the law would be a "historic mistake."
"Slandering Turkey’s honorable history, insulting the Turkish nation
and the values of Turkishness has become a habit with the AK Party’s
political thinking, which lacks a sense of identity," he said.
DW staff ,2144,3302161,0 0.html