In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: ‘Turkish Parliament Softens Law Restricting Free Speech’
Background: Nationalism, Article 301 and a clampdown on writers
Key Player: Recep Tayyip Erdogan (1954–)
Opinion & Analysis: ‘Amendments to Article 301 on “Turkish identity” Fail to Satisfy’
Related Topics: Turkey in the headlines
Reference: Secularism in Turkey
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Turkey Narrows Scope of Lese-Majesty Law
April 30, 2008 06:01 PM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
A law that had banned criticism of “Turkishness” was amended Wednesday. But with a recent rise in nationalism, not all Turks welcome the new leniency.
30-Second Summary
Turkey’s parliament voted 250-65 to change Article 301 of the Turkish penal code to criminalize insulting only the “Turkish state” and Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Previously, the law made illegal any communication found to be disparaging of the vaguely defined concept of “Turkishness.”
The move was heralded by the European Union. Said the EU presidency, “This is a constructive step forward in ensuring freedom of expression and we look forward to its effective implementation.”
But what Turks find to be endless pre-EU accession demands has played into nationalist backlash. Statistics compiled by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy show Turkish popular support for EU accession dropping from 65 to 49 percent between 2002 and 2007.
The increasing nationalism led some Turks to embrace the old law. One lawyer, Kemal Kerincsiz, has brought cases under Article 301 against at least 40 writers and was indicted in January along with 12 others for conspiring to assassinate known Turkish dissidents, including journalist Hrant Dink. After Dink was killed by a hard-line nationalist teenager, his murderer was photographed being embraced by police officers sympathetic to his cause.
Meanwhile free speech advocates say the amendments do not go far enough. Reporters Without Borders says they “still leave too much scope for misuse of these articles and for prosecutions against the news media.”
The move was heralded by the European Union. Said the EU presidency, “This is a constructive step forward in ensuring freedom of expression and we look forward to its effective implementation.”
But what Turks find to be endless pre-EU accession demands has played into nationalist backlash. Statistics compiled by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy show Turkish popular support for EU accession dropping from 65 to 49 percent between 2002 and 2007.
The increasing nationalism led some Turks to embrace the old law. One lawyer, Kemal Kerincsiz, has brought cases under Article 301 against at least 40 writers and was indicted in January along with 12 others for conspiring to assassinate known Turkish dissidents, including journalist Hrant Dink. After Dink was killed by a hard-line nationalist teenager, his murderer was photographed being embraced by police officers sympathetic to his cause.
Meanwhile free speech advocates say the amendments do not go far enough. Reporters Without Borders says they “still leave too much scope for misuse of these articles and for prosecutions against the news media.”
Headline Link: ‘Turkish Parliament Softens Law Restricting Free Speech’
The AP writes that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “Justice and Development Party, which has 340 lawmakers in the 550-seat Parliament, was the only party that voted for the amendment.”
Source: International Herald Tribune (Associated Press)
Background: Nationalism, Article 301 and a clampdown on writers
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy compiled a set of graphs in a PDF showing growth in Turkish per-capita GDP and shifts in political opinion between 2002 and 2007, the first five years of Erdogan’s administration. While Turkey’s per-capita GDP rose from $2,675 to $6,548 over the five-year period, public support for Turkish EU accession dropped from 65 to 49 percent.
Source: Washington Institute for Near East Policy (PDF document)
Ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead outside of the office of his Agos newspaper by 17-year-old Ogun Samast. Dink had written openly about Armenian Genocide allegations, sparking the ire of ultranationalists who, according to some sources, abetted Samast and supplied him with a gun. After Samast was arrested, photographs emerged of him holding a Turkish flag and celebrating with smiling police officers.
Source: Global Voices Online
Elif Shafak’s book, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” which includes references to the Armenian Genocide, sparked an Article 301 case led by ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz. Shafak told the BBC, “We do not deserve this. This is not the law that should be applied to our own citizens and we need to do something about it. The question is, does the government lack either the will or the courage to take that step?”
Source: The BBC
Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature—the first Turk to win the honor—is considered a national bard for his depictions of Ottoman and modern Turkish life. Statements he made about the Armenian Genocide have tainted his image among some sectors of Turkish society, however, prompting death threats and a Kerincsiz-led Article 301 case against him. Pamuk filed for an extra semester-in-residence at New York’s Columbia University.
Source: The Guardian
Andrew Anthony writes for U.K. paper The Guardian about the current tide of Turkish nationalism. Anthony met with former pro soccer player Samim Uygun, a leader of a group of businessmen and politicians, who believes that foreign investment is a threat to Turkish sovereignty, that Israel fancies claims on Turkish territory, that Dink’s murder “was unimportant” and that Pamuk’s writing is but a shill for Armenia. Anthony writes, “Uygun saw himself on the center right, which set the imagination racing over what a member of the Turkish far-right might sound like.”
Source: The Guardian
On the night of Jan. 26, Turkish authorities arrested 13 ultranationalists, including Kerincsiz, suspected of planning assassinations of dissidents including Pamuk and Dink. The group is also thought to have connections to the government. These arrests have come to be known as the Ergenekon scandal, named for the legendary birthplace of the Turkish state.
Source: The New York Times (free registration may be required)
Key Player: Recep Tayyip Erdogan (1954–)
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan rose to power through populist politics. In 1994 Erdogan was elected as mayor of the Greater Istanbul Municipality. In 1998 he was briefly jailed for “inciting religious hatred” due to his recitation of an Islamist poem. His party, the moderate but Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party, has ruled Turkey since 2002. The country has since seen enormous economic expansion, although secularists criticize the party’s social reform policies, which include a failed attempt to criminalize adultery, a move to redraft the constitution to allow female students to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities, and stiff taxation on alcohol. The working classes from rural areas, however, generally herald Erdogan’s policies.
Source: The BBC
Opinion & Analysis: ‘Amendments to Article 301 on “Turkish identity” Fail to Satisfy’
International press freedoms group Reporters Without Borders feels the amendments to Article 301 are insufficient and that it should be repealed outright: “The amendments proposed by the Justice and Development Party still leave too much scope for misuse of these articles and for prosecutions against the news media.”
Source: Reporters Without Borders
Related Topics: Turkey in the headlines
On Feb. 7, the Turkish parliament passed a constitutional amendment allowing female university students to wear Islamic headscarves on public university campuses.
Source: findingDulcinea
Famed for strong tobacco, Turkey nonetheless introduced in January one of the world’s strictest bans on public smoking.
Source: findingDulcinea
Reference: Secularism in Turkey
In 1923, amid the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and World War I, military-general-turned-national-leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk sought to establish Turkey as a secular republic by founding the nation upon a number of Westernizing reforms. Religion was to be kept out of governmental institutions. A centralized education system akin to the one in France was put in place, and women were given equal rights under the law.
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
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