TURKEY: PARLIAMENT APPROVES ‘COSMETIC’ FREE-SPEECH REFORM
By Jeremy Bransten
EurasiaNet, NY
April 30 2008
Turkey’s parliament has voted to amend Article 301, a controversial
law that limited free speech by permitting the prosecution of people
for "insulting Turkishness."
Under the changes, which must still be approved by the country’s
president, insulting Turkishness would no longer be a crime, but
insulting the Turkish nation could still land you in prison.
According to Amberin Zaman, the Turkey correspondent for "The
Economist" magazine, the distinction between insulting Turkishness
and insulting the Turkish nation isn’t any clearer in Turkish than it
is in translation. That leaves many people wondering how to interpret
the revision to Article 301.
"A lot of people are asking the same question, and the change seems
to be more cosmetic than anything else," Zaman says. "Indeed, what
is the difference? And equally, what do they mean by the ‘Turkish
nation’? Does it mean ethnic Turks? Does it encompass Kurds, as
well? Nobody really understands what this means."
In recent years, thousands of people have been prosecuted in Turkey
for "insulting Turkishness," as set out in Article 301. They include
academics, historians, journalists, and writers — including Nobel
laureate Orhan Pamuk.
Dink Assassination
Pamuk was tried for stating, in an interview with a Swiss magazine,
that "30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands,
and nobody but me dares to talk about it." The charges against Pamuk
were later dropped. But contrary to his claim, Pamuk was not the only
person in Turkey discussing the Armenian issue — and getting into
trouble for it.
In 2006, the well-known Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was
prosecuted under Article 301 for insulting Turkishness, and received
a six-month suspended sentence. He was subsequently assassinated by
a militant nationalist.
The European Union demanded that Turkey drop restrictions on
free speech as a precondition to eventually joining the bloc. The
government-sponsored amendment to Article 301 appears to be an attempt
to satisfy the EU, as well as Turkish nationalists. And in Zaman’s
assessment, it will probably do neither.
"I think that this was a sort of balancing act," Zaman says, "and I
think in the process they fell off the tightrope, because neither the
nationalists — who they were trying to appease — sound terribly
happy, nor does the EU. In fact, we’ve heard many EU officials,
at least in private, complain that this was just a cosmetic change
and didn’t go anywhere near addressing their concerns about free
expression in Turkey."
If the amendment becomes law, much will depend on how Turkish
prosecutors and judges choose to interpret what constitutes "insulting
the Turkish nation." The one concrete change from the amendment is
that the maximum jail time for the offense will now be two years,
rather than the previous three.
But Zaman is skeptical that the amended law will offer more protection
to those who touch sensitive political and historical subjects.
"I think we will continue to see writers like Orhan Pamuk and others
who dare to challenge the official history — be it on the issue
of the massacre of Armenians in 1915 or the fate of the Kurds,"
she says. "I think that such prosecutions will continue."
The EU presidency, currently held by Slovenia, has issued a statement
calling the amendment to Article 301 "a constructive step forward
in ensuring freedom of expression." But several human rights groups
say the amendment does not go far enough. They are calling for a
change to other laws that restrict expression, including Turkey’s
antiterror law and its laws on crimes against the country’s founder,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.