NEW TURKISH FREE SPEECH AMENDMENT TO GO TO PARLIAMENT THIS WEEK
NTV MSNBC
Jan 21 2008
Turkey
If the government’s amendment is approved, the Justice Minister will
have to approve the opening of a prosecution under Article 301.
ANKARA – A draft amendment to a controversial article of the Turkish
penal code will be submitted to the office of the speaker to the
parliament this week, a senior government officials said Monday.
The amendment to Article 301 of the penal code has been drafted and
will go to the parliament within days, Bekir Bozdag, a deputy chairman
of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) told reporters.
Article 301 sets out the crime of insulting Turkish identity or
"Turkishness" and has been used to try a number of leading Turkish
writers and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winning author Orhan
Pamuk and slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
According to Bozdag, in the new version of Article 301 the term
"Turkishness" would be replaced by "the Turkish nation" and the
expression "Republic of Turkey" would replace the word "republic".
The maximum sentence that could be handed down under the revised
article would be two years, down from the present three, he said.
"Paragraphs of the article will be united," said Bozdag. "Thus the
lawmakers will allow judges to opt in favor of freedom."
Under the new article, permission to launch a prosecution under Article
301 had to be given by the Justice Minister, something Bozdag said
gave the minister the discretion to act in a way that was politically
of advantage to Turkey.