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Today's Zaman, Turkey
Jan 25 2007
Gül admits article 301 problematic
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül acknowledged yesterday that changes in
a penal code article were necessary, the strongest sign yet from the
government that the law, criticized by the European Union for
restricting freedoms, could be amended.
`We know that there are some problems with Article 301,' Gül told
reporters before departing for an international donors conference on
Lebanon in Paris. `We see that changes in the article are necessary.'
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) is once again under
the spotlight after the murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian
journalist who had been tried and sentenced to a six-month suspended
imprisonment for `insulting Turkishness' under the law.
The suspected murderer, 17-year-old Ogün Samast, reportedly told the
police that he had killed Dink because he had said `Turkish blood is
dirty.'
The government has dragged its feet on changing the law, requesting
more time to see how it is implemented and saying that no one, in the
end, has been sent to jail under Article 301. But Dink, in his last
column for his Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote that
imprisonment was not the only punishment that a person could suffer,
complaining that he had come to be known as a person convicted of
insulting Turkishness.
Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek, one of the most reluctant figures
within the government to change the law, said on Tuesday that
possible amendments should be discussed at a later stage, after Dink
was buried.
Dink's funeral on Tuesday drew up to 100,000 people. Some
participants carried banners reading `Murderer 301.'
`We want free expression of thoughts that do not contain any
incitement to violence,' Gül told reporters. `We don't want anyone to
go to jail because of expressing his or her views.' He added that the
government was in touch with nongovernmental organizations to obtain
their proposals on how Article 301 should change.
Bahçeli: Nationalism under attack
The funeral of Dink, who was shot three times in the neck on Friday
in front of his newspaper office, was widely seen as a call for
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, with participants
carrying identical black-and-white banners reading `We are all Hrant
Dink' and `We are all Armenians.'
In another sign that the funeral could lead to the improvement of
relations between Turkey and Armenia, the government invited members
of the Armenian diaspora and Armenian religious leaders to the
funeral.
Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP),
criticized mourners for carrying banners reading `We are all
Armenians' and complained there was a `purposeful lynching campaign'
against the state and Turkish nationalism.
`It has become a tradition to declare the state guilty after every
incident taking place in this country and start a campaign aimed at
eroding trust in the state,' Bahçeli said.
Bahçeli also lashed out at the Turkish Industrialists and
Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD), Turkey's leading business
group, for calling for education in languages other than Turkish and
measures to allow political parties to do politics on ethnic lines in
a recent study.
According to Bahçeli, this puts TÜSİAD on the same page with the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). `This shows TÜSİAD
supports the PKK's politicization project,' he said.
Jan 25 2007
Gül admits article 301 problematic
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül acknowledged yesterday that changes in
a penal code article were necessary, the strongest sign yet from the
government that the law, criticized by the European Union for
restricting freedoms, could be amended.
`We know that there are some problems with Article 301,' Gül told
reporters before departing for an international donors conference on
Lebanon in Paris. `We see that changes in the article are necessary.'
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) is once again under
the spotlight after the murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian
journalist who had been tried and sentenced to a six-month suspended
imprisonment for `insulting Turkishness' under the law.
The suspected murderer, 17-year-old Ogün Samast, reportedly told the
police that he had killed Dink because he had said `Turkish blood is
dirty.'
The government has dragged its feet on changing the law, requesting
more time to see how it is implemented and saying that no one, in the
end, has been sent to jail under Article 301. But Dink, in his last
column for his Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote that
imprisonment was not the only punishment that a person could suffer,
complaining that he had come to be known as a person convicted of
insulting Turkishness.
Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek, one of the most reluctant figures
within the government to change the law, said on Tuesday that
possible amendments should be discussed at a later stage, after Dink
was buried.
Dink's funeral on Tuesday drew up to 100,000 people. Some
participants carried banners reading `Murderer 301.'
`We want free expression of thoughts that do not contain any
incitement to violence,' Gül told reporters. `We don't want anyone to
go to jail because of expressing his or her views.' He added that the
government was in touch with nongovernmental organizations to obtain
their proposals on how Article 301 should change.
Bahçeli: Nationalism under attack
The funeral of Dink, who was shot three times in the neck on Friday
in front of his newspaper office, was widely seen as a call for
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, with participants
carrying identical black-and-white banners reading `We are all Hrant
Dink' and `We are all Armenians.'
In another sign that the funeral could lead to the improvement of
relations between Turkey and Armenia, the government invited members
of the Armenian diaspora and Armenian religious leaders to the
funeral.
Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP),
criticized mourners for carrying banners reading `We are all
Armenians' and complained there was a `purposeful lynching campaign'
against the state and Turkish nationalism.
`It has become a tradition to declare the state guilty after every
incident taking place in this country and start a campaign aimed at
eroding trust in the state,' Bahçeli said.
Bahçeli also lashed out at the Turkish Industrialists and
Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD), Turkey's leading business
group, for calling for education in languages other than Turkish and
measures to allow political parties to do politics on ethnic lines in
a recent study.
According to Bahçeli, this puts TÜSİAD on the same page with the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). `This shows TÜSİAD
supports the PKK's politicization project,' he said.