23 November 2005
NEW CODE PENALISES FREE EXPRESSION
Turkey's bid to join the European Union has come under renewed criticism following reports that legal reforms aimed at satisfying EU standards on human rights are failing to safeguard freedom of expression and press freedom.
International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) says Turkey's amended Penal Code, enacted in June 2005, has not led to fewer court cases brought against writers, publishers and journalists. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Growing numbers of individuals are being sued under Article 301, which penalises those who insult the military and the State.
The Article states, "A person who explicitly insults being a Turk, the Republic or the Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be imposed a penalty of imprisonment for a term of six months to three years."
Individuals being sued include internationally renowned writer Orhan Pamuk, who told a Swiss reporter in February that "thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in [Turkey] and nobody but me dares to talk about it." Pamuk is due to appear in court on 16 December 2005.
Fatih Tas, the owner of Aram Publishing House, has also been charged under Article 301 for publishing a Turkish edition of the book "Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade", says WiPC. The book accuses the Turkish government of committing human rights violations and suggests that the government's treatment of Kurds in the southeast in the early 1990s amounted to genocide.
In other cases, a journalist, Hrant Dink, has been given a six-month suspended sentence for "insulting and weakening Turkish identity through the media," reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
As Editor-in-Chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly "Agos," Dink wrote a series of articles in 2004 dealing with the collective memory of the Armenian massacres of 1915-1917 under the Ottoman Empire. He called on Armenians to move beyond historical anger toward Turks and "turn to the new blood of independent Armenia."
Turkey does not acknowledge that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks at the beginning of the 20th century amounted to genocide. The European Parliament has conditioned Turkey's entry to the EU on its formal recognition of the killings as genocide.
WiPC says there are about 60 individuals who are facing court proceedings in Turkey because of what they wrote or published.
They include publisher Ragip Zarakolu, newspaper editor Ersen Korkmaz, Rahmi Yildirim, Emin Karaca and Sehmus Ülek, vice-president of the human rights group Mazlum-Der.
In its latest report on Turkey's progress toward meeting EU membership criteria, the EU says the Penal Code will have to be amended if prosecutors continue to open new cases against individuals who express their opinions peacefully.
Visit these links:
- International PEN:
http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/index.php?pid=33&aid=406- PEN/IPA Report on Penal Code:
http://www.ipa-uie.org/PressRelease/171204/COMMENTS.htm- RSF on the Amended Penal Code:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13909- CPJ Report on Turkey:
http://www.cpj.org/attacks04/mideast04/turkey.html- Human Rights Watch:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/29/turkey11872.htm- Backgrounder on Human Rights in Turkey:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/turkey9882.htm- PEN American Center:
http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/980- OSCE Analysis of Turkey's Penal Code:
http://www.osce.org/documents/html/pdftohtml/14223_en.pdf.html- EU Progress Report for Turkey:
http://tinyurl.com/9z46w- EU Concern for Penal Code:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4243102.stm- BiaNet Report on Turkey's New Penal Code:
http://www.bianet.org/2005/10/01_eng/news64417.htm(Image: Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk)