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Turkey faces pressure over freedom of speech
Gulf Times, Qatar
July 14 2006
Published: Friday, 14 July, 2006, 01:03 PM Doha Time
ISTANBUL: Turkey yesterday faced growing demands to ease restrictions
on freedom of speech after a court confirmed a six-month suspended
jail sentence for an editor convicted of "insulting Turkishness".
The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, said after the ruling
this week that Ankara should rewrite its penal code.
Human rights groups and Turkish commentators urged the government to
abolish the code's controversial Article 301, which carries a jail
sentence of up to three years.
The High Court of Appeals ruling in the case of Hrant Dink,
editor-in-chief of the Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos, would send a
chill through the domestic media, said Joel Simon, executive director
of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"It calls into question the country's commitment to press freedom
and legal reforms which are a pre-condition for its goal of joining
the European Union," Simon said.
Turkey started EU entry talks last October but negotiations are
expected to last more than a decade. In recent months it has faced
growing criticism from Brussels over the pace of reform.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Wednesday the latest
ruling showed the reformed penal code still restricted freedom of
expression and would set a binding precedent for other pending human
rights cases.
He said the Commission would review the situation in the light of the
EU's political criteria in its upcoming progress report on Turkey in
late October or early November.
Sensitive to those concerns, the government has said it may call
parliament back from its summer recess two weeks early in mid-September
to push through the latest package of reforms.
Rights groups and Turkish commentators said it should use this
opportunity to abolish Article 301.
"A revision of Article 301 must urgently be incorporated into this
package," said Radikal newspaper editor Ismet Berkan.
The government has not yet commented on the court's ruling and
officials were not immediately available.
Jonathan Sugden from New York-based Human Rights Watch said it was
difficult for the government to abolish such laws given its uneasy
relationship with the state bureaucracy.
The onus was thus on judges who could acquit in such cases on the
grounds that a conviction would contravene Article 10 of the European
Convention on Human Rights, which has been incorporated in Turkish law.
"It is staggering that seven years into a reform programme and several
programmes dedicated to training judges in applying the convention,
a substantial section of the judiciary ... still hasn't grasped the
fundamentals," he said.
Internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is among a
host of other writers who have been prosecuted under the same laws,
although his case was dropped.
Dink was sentenced for Armenian-related comments.
Armenians say 1.5mn Armenians were killed in a genocide by the
Ottoman Turks in 1915, but Turkey rejects this and says both Christian
Armenians and Muslim Turks suffered mass killings in partisan conflict.
London-based Amnesty International called for an immediate repeal of
the law, which it says muzzles peaceful dissenting opinion, and said
it could be part of the next reform package.
* Turkish prosecutors have charged nine people with killing a top
judge and bombing a secularist newspaper, attacks which fuelled
tensions between the government and hardline secularists, Turkish
media said late on Wednesday.
The prosecutors said the shooting at the top administrative court,
the Council of State, was an attack on the secular order as the court
had upheld rules restricting the wearing of the Muslim headscarf and
faced fierce criticism in Islamist circles.
Wearing the headscarf in public offices and universities is a central
issue in the debate over the significance of Islam in Turkey, which
is largely Muslim but has a secular constitutional system. Courts
have blocked government attempts to ease the ban.
The Ankara prosecutor's office has completed the indictment over the
killing of a senior Council of State judge in May, state-run Anatolian
news agency reported. According to popular newspaper Hurriyet, the
indictment statement said the attack was linked to the headscarf ban.
The prosecutor's office was not immediately available for comment.
Prosecutor Semsettin Ozcan charged a total of nine people, including
Alparslan Arslan, a young lawyer arrested for the killing, with
"attempting to overthrow the constitutional order by force".
The prosecutor sought four life terms for Arslan, and three life
terms for two other defendants.
The prosecutor also charged the three defendants with "founding and
administering an illegal armed organisation".
Tensions between the secularists, who include the armed forces, and
the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have intensified ahead
of next year's elections.
Secularists accuse the highly popular party, which has former political
Islamists among its founders, of having a hidden Islamist agenda. The
AKP denies this.
The prosecutor also completed the indictment of six people over a bomb
attack against Turkey's most staunchly secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet.
The left-leaning Cumhuriyet recently ran a media campaign directed
at what it saw as rising Islamic fundamentalism in the European Union
candidate country.-Reuters
Gulf Times, Qatar
July 14 2006
Published: Friday, 14 July, 2006, 01:03 PM Doha Time
ISTANBUL: Turkey yesterday faced growing demands to ease restrictions
on freedom of speech after a court confirmed a six-month suspended
jail sentence for an editor convicted of "insulting Turkishness".
The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, said after the ruling
this week that Ankara should rewrite its penal code.
Human rights groups and Turkish commentators urged the government to
abolish the code's controversial Article 301, which carries a jail
sentence of up to three years.
The High Court of Appeals ruling in the case of Hrant Dink,
editor-in-chief of the Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos, would send a
chill through the domestic media, said Joel Simon, executive director
of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"It calls into question the country's commitment to press freedom
and legal reforms which are a pre-condition for its goal of joining
the European Union," Simon said.
Turkey started EU entry talks last October but negotiations are
expected to last more than a decade. In recent months it has faced
growing criticism from Brussels over the pace of reform.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Wednesday the latest
ruling showed the reformed penal code still restricted freedom of
expression and would set a binding precedent for other pending human
rights cases.
He said the Commission would review the situation in the light of the
EU's political criteria in its upcoming progress report on Turkey in
late October or early November.
Sensitive to those concerns, the government has said it may call
parliament back from its summer recess two weeks early in mid-September
to push through the latest package of reforms.
Rights groups and Turkish commentators said it should use this
opportunity to abolish Article 301.
"A revision of Article 301 must urgently be incorporated into this
package," said Radikal newspaper editor Ismet Berkan.
The government has not yet commented on the court's ruling and
officials were not immediately available.
Jonathan Sugden from New York-based Human Rights Watch said it was
difficult for the government to abolish such laws given its uneasy
relationship with the state bureaucracy.
The onus was thus on judges who could acquit in such cases on the
grounds that a conviction would contravene Article 10 of the European
Convention on Human Rights, which has been incorporated in Turkish law.
"It is staggering that seven years into a reform programme and several
programmes dedicated to training judges in applying the convention,
a substantial section of the judiciary ... still hasn't grasped the
fundamentals," he said.
Internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is among a
host of other writers who have been prosecuted under the same laws,
although his case was dropped.
Dink was sentenced for Armenian-related comments.
Armenians say 1.5mn Armenians were killed in a genocide by the
Ottoman Turks in 1915, but Turkey rejects this and says both Christian
Armenians and Muslim Turks suffered mass killings in partisan conflict.
London-based Amnesty International called for an immediate repeal of
the law, which it says muzzles peaceful dissenting opinion, and said
it could be part of the next reform package.
* Turkish prosecutors have charged nine people with killing a top
judge and bombing a secularist newspaper, attacks which fuelled
tensions between the government and hardline secularists, Turkish
media said late on Wednesday.
The prosecutors said the shooting at the top administrative court,
the Council of State, was an attack on the secular order as the court
had upheld rules restricting the wearing of the Muslim headscarf and
faced fierce criticism in Islamist circles.
Wearing the headscarf in public offices and universities is a central
issue in the debate over the significance of Islam in Turkey, which
is largely Muslim but has a secular constitutional system. Courts
have blocked government attempts to ease the ban.
The Ankara prosecutor's office has completed the indictment over the
killing of a senior Council of State judge in May, state-run Anatolian
news agency reported. According to popular newspaper Hurriyet, the
indictment statement said the attack was linked to the headscarf ban.
The prosecutor's office was not immediately available for comment.
Prosecutor Semsettin Ozcan charged a total of nine people, including
Alparslan Arslan, a young lawyer arrested for the killing, with
"attempting to overthrow the constitutional order by force".
The prosecutor sought four life terms for Arslan, and three life
terms for two other defendants.
The prosecutor also charged the three defendants with "founding and
administering an illegal armed organisation".
Tensions between the secularists, who include the armed forces, and
the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have intensified ahead
of next year's elections.
Secularists accuse the highly popular party, which has former political
Islamists among its founders, of having a hidden Islamist agenda. The
AKP denies this.
The prosecutor also completed the indictment of six people over a bomb
attack against Turkey's most staunchly secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet.
The left-leaning Cumhuriyet recently ran a media campaign directed
at what it saw as rising Islamic fundamentalism in the European Union
candidate country.-Reuters