[QODLink]
Europe
Turkey party mulls court response
Meeting held to discuss ways to tackle petition to shut down governing AK Party.
Last Modified: 07 Apr 2008 23:06 GMT
AK Party's critics accuse it of trying to undermine
the separation of state and religion [Reuters]
The leaders of Turkey's governing party have discussed ways to tackle a petition seeking to close the ruling party.
 
The case seeks to ban 71 officials of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, and Abdullah Gul, the president, from politics for five years.
The AK Party, which has its roots in political Islam, denies it is trying to undermine the separation of state and religion in secular Turkey.
The AK Party meeting in Ankara came on a day it submitted a proposal to parliament aimed at softening a law that curbs free speech.
 
Proposed amendment
 
The government has said the new article would have provisions that would stop nationalist prosecutors with their own political agenda from exploiting the law.
 
Last month when Turkey's constitutional court said it would hear the case, the European Union warned it might affect Turkey's bid to join the bloc.
 

The proposal makes the Turkish president responsible for approving any prosecution related to Article 301 of the penal code.

 

That law makes denigrating Turkish identity or insulting the country's institutions punishable by up to three years in prison.

 

Under the proposed amendment, denigrating Turkish identity is replaced with denigrating the "Turkish nation", an effort to eliminate the hard-to-define "Turkishness" now included in the law.

 

It also decreases the maximum punishment to two years, meaning it can be suspended completely.

 

'National interests'

 

The AK Party proposal also requires presidential approval for prosecution under Article 305, which outlaws insults against "national interests".

 

It was not clear whether the amendment, an important condition for Turkey's progress toward membership in the European Union, would satisfy critics.

 

Some of these critics have urged Turkey to scrap the article entirely.

 

It was also not clear when the proposal would be debated.

 

Erdogan has been criticised lately for slowing progress on reforms required for Turkey's EU goal while focusing on lifting a ban on head scarves.

Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
Topics in this article
People
Country
Featured on Al Jazeera
An unflinching portrait of physical labour in the 21st century.
The stark choice between a fascist or an imperialist course in Syria should be discarded for a third and better course.
Israel's propaganda machine carefully chooses its words to assert illegal ownership over Jerusalem and Palestine.
As Western fears grow over Iran's continuing nuclear programme, we ask how a military strike could impact the region.
<  > 
join our mailing list

Enter Zip Code
Go