GagWatch

The Turkish parliament on Tuesday approved a reform of the controversial Article 301 of the country’s penal code which sets limits on freedom of the speech by criminalising insults to “Turkishness”.

At present the article imposes up to three years in prison for such an insult but, under the reform, the country’s justice minister will have to give his consent on opening investigations on possible violations of this law. It also replaces “insulting Turkishness” with “insulting the Turkish nation” and reduces the maximum sentence to two years - which could be suspended, especially for first-time offenders.

The EU has repeatedly called on Turkey to amend or scrap this part of its penal code as a prerequisite for joining the bloc but critics argue that the changes are purely cosmetic and that freedom of speech will remain limited in Turkey.

“What needs to be done is to abolish [Article] 301 altogether,” Fatma Kurtulan, a pro-Kurdish party deputy, was quoted as saying by AP.

It would be “illusive” to believe this amendment designed to please the EU would change anything substantial with regards to free speech, Ms Kurtulan added.

Many Turkish intellectuals and writers have been tried under article 301, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered last year.

A Turkish court is to hear the case against writer Atilla Yayla, charged with insulting the memory of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is accused of flouting one of several laws that limits freedom of expression for intellectuals in Turkey.

Professor Yayla was charged with “insulting Ataturk” - the revered founder of modern Turkey - after appearing on a panel discussion in which he suggested the early Turkish Republic was not as progressive as it’s painted. The prosecutor in the case is asking for a five-year prison sentence.

The professor, who has been vilified by the Turkish press and suspended from work at an Ankara university, denies the charge of insult and argues that academics must be guaranteed freedom of expression in order to pursue their research.

This hearing comes as the Turkish parliament prepares to debate amending the notorious Article 301 which criminalises “insulting Turkishness” and which has been used to prosecute dozens of writers and intellectuals, including Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink. The law that criminalises “insulting Ataturk”, however, is not up for discussion.

OpEd News (via) reports that Ateizm.org, a prominent non-profit atheist web-site, based in Turkey, was closed down - for the second time - December 2007 on orders from a Turkish court. The site, which was founded in 2000 by three young Turkish atheists, hosts an online discussion board named Ateistforum which is one of the busier destinations for the country’s online community.

Over the years, the site has been the target of several hacking and denial of service attacks - all of which in managed to survive. However, things became more difficult in June 2007 when - without warning - the site was closed to its Turkish audience following a court order issued in response to legal action taken by a Turkish creationist named Adnan Oktar (now widely known by his pen name “Harun Yahya”). Adnan Oktar is the founder and honorary president of Bilim Araştırma Vakfı (BAV) through which he propogates much of his material. BAV is a frequent target for Ateizm.org which is critical of the creationist group, and which puts a deal of effort into debunkuing its claims.

Since the site is hosted in the US, it remained available internationally but could not be accessed by its Turkish target audience. So the people behind the site changed their domain name - to Ateizm1.org - and kept on going. Until December, when Ateizm.org (then called Ateizm1.org) was closed to Turkish audience for the second time following another court order.

Oktar has a history of turning to the judges to silence his critics. in April 2007 he filed a libel lawsuit against the virtual community Ek$i Sözlük. The court ordered the service provider to close the site to public access and temporarily suspended so that the entry on Oktar could be expunged and locked. In August of the same year, he managed to convince a Turkish court to block internet access to WordPress.com to all of Turkey. His lawyers argued that blogs on WordPress.com contained libelous material on Oktar and his colleague which WordPress.com staff was unwilling to remove.

An Ankara court has blocked access (via) to YouTube because of clips deemed disrespectful to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founder. Insulting Ataturk is still illegal in the country.

This is the second time Turkey has tried to ban the site. Back in March access to the site was suspended, also over clips of Ataturk. The ban was lifted after YouTube removed the offending videos.

In September, a court in the eastern city of Sivas also ordered a ban on the site, but this was never implemented.

For more than 30 years Huysuz Virjin (the Petulant Virgin), a cross-dresser with a razor-sharp wit and a merciless tongue, has been winning the affection of millions of Turks. And his TV success has been vaunted as evidence of the tolerance of Turkey’s unique mix of Islam and secularism. But not for much longer, it seems (via). For the past year Huysuz Virjin has been replaced by his less exotic self, Seyfi Dursunoglu.

The 76-year-old entertainer claims to have been forced to trade in his trademark blonde wig, silk stockings and sexy gowns for more conventional male garb after Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog, the RTUK, put pressure on television stations to ban cross-dressing.

RTUK denies such censorship. But Mr Dursunoglu insists that he is the victim of a creeping conservatism that he believes has infected the country ever since the mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party came to power five years ago. Although he was allowed to appear in drag for a special new-year programme, he says that “as a performer, I am no longer as free”. Similar concerns about artistic freedom and secularism were aired last month by Fazil Say, a Turkish pianist, who accused the AK party of being unfriendly.

The Guardian (via) reports that yet another publisher has fallen foul of the infamous Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code. This time for trying to promote reconcilliation between Turks and Armenians.

Ragip Zarakolu is facing up to three years in prison for publishing a book - promoting reconciliation between Turks and Armenians - by George Jerjian, a writer living in London.

Jerjian’s book, The Truth Will Set Us Free, which was translated into Turkish in 2005, chronicles the life of his Armenian grandmother who survived the early 20th century massacres of Armenians thanks to an Ottoman soldier. The historical account has prompted as much controversy among the Armenian diaspora, not least in the US, as it has in Turkey.

Accoding to Labour MEP Richard Howitt, who will attend the hearing at Istanbul’s Asliye Ceze courthouse, Mr Jerjian “is a highly credible author with very moderate views. If even he falls foul of Turkish law it shows how far they still have to go on freedom of expression.”

Yesterday the Turkish justice minister, Mehmet Ali Sahin, reiterated the sentiment, telling Howitt that “freely expressed views that neither promote terrorism nor violence should be protected”.

But while Turkish diplomats admit the contentious law has probably done more damage to Ankara’s efforts to join the EU than any other single piece of legislation, observers say there has been little headway made over reforming the spirit and letter of the law.

In a climate of unabated nationalism, state prosecutors and police officials continue to level charges against artists, musicians and writers perceived to publicly denigrate Turkishness.

Turkish punk band, Deli is facing up to 18 months in jail over a song which… complains about an exam (via).

The song is called ÖSYM - the name of the country’s examination board that decides which students go to university, based on a three-hour exam every June - and includes the line “ÖSYM, kiss my arse.”

An Ankara prosecutor decided that insulting state employees should be a crime and started legal proceedings against the five piece band May 2nd.

Few had heard of the Bursa-based punk band Deli until June 2007 when a teenage fan of the band, identified in media reports and on YouTube only by his first name, Hako, uploaded a video clip on the website YouTube.com where he lip-synchs his way through Deli’s song.

Deli’s 24-year-old lead singer and lyricist Cengiz Sari has called the court case “ridiculous.” Nevertheless, when band releases its début album this month, they have decided not to include the song ÖSYM in order to avoid further controversy.

On Tuesday, a Turkish court suspended access to YouTube after prosecutors told the court that clips insulting former Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had appeared on the site. YouTube has now removed the video and Turkish internet users are, once again, able to access the website (via).

A Turkish court has suspended access to YouTube after prosecutors told the court that clips insulting former Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had appeared on the site.

The offending videos had already sparked a storm of complaints to YouTube, who had been removing them. But after a clip was posted dubbing Ataturk and Turks homosexuals, the court decided to go further and block al access to the site.

Turkish visitors to the site are now greeted with a message in English and Turkish reading “Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court”.

The clip in question violates Turkey’s infamous Article 301, which makes “insulting Turkishness” and offence.

Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul has pledged to change the country’s notorious Article 301 “in a few weeks time”.

“This article 301 overshadows Turkey’s reform progress. Both myself and Prime Minister Erdogan believe that we have to change this article,” Mr Gul said referring to Turkey’s penal code article which punishes “denigrating Turkishness” and which has led to charges against journalists and writers like Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

The EU has repeatedly urged Ankara to either revise or scrap the article in order to ensure freedom of expression in the country, but Mr Gul has indicated that the trials against writers in the country also reflect a mentality within the ranks of Turkish prosecutors. He has expressed a desire to see this mentality change, but also pointed out that “this cannot happen over night; it’s a process.”