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Turkey vows to loosen laws on free speech

Associated Press in Ankara
Saturday November 4, 2006
The Guardian

Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul vowed yesterday to end problems stemming from an article in the country's penal code that is used to charge writers, journalists and academics for expressing their opinions, Europe's human rights watchdog said.
"The key message was very clear, 'this will end'," Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, said after meeting Mr Gul in Ankara. But Mr Hammarberg said the minister had not specified how the change would be made.

It was the first indication by the Turkish government that it would change the problematic article, number 301 in the penal code. Turkish authorities were not available for comment.
Until now, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been resisting change, arguing that despite the trials, no one has ended up in prison for expressing opinions. This year's Nobel prize-winner, Orhan Pamuk, and novelist Elif Shafak, were among a long list of writers, journalists and academics who have been prosecuted under article 301.

Charges of insulting Turkishness against Pamuk were dropped over a technicality earlier this year, and Shafak was acquitted. Critics say the trials and threat of prosecution act as a deterrent to free speech and are unacceptable.

Mr Hammarberg said permanently abolishing the article, amending it or attaching an explanatory note for prosecutors about its real intent would be possible options to correct it. "I think he [Mr Gul] deliberately did not want to mention the precise route," Mr Hammarberg said.

The EU is expected to chide Turkey in a progress report due next week for slipping in its reform program and not acting to change laws that have been used to curb freedoms.