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Turkey Alters Law Curtailing Free Speech

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  • Turkey Alters Law Curtailing Free Speech

    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 http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3302161,0 0.html
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