Bring The Concept Of Turkish Nation To 301

The article, recently criticized in the European Commission Progress Report, is better known as an article on "the denigration of Turkishness" and has been used in more than 60 cases over the past year to prosecute intellectuals.

Responding to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's previous statement "if anyone has a proposal on 301 we are waiting for it", Press Council Chairman Oktay Eksi sent a letter to the PM on November 15 with a short list of proposals including the changing of the concept of "Turkishness" to "The Turkish Nation". The proposal also replaces "denigration" with "insult".

In summary the Press Council's view is that the concept of offence should change while the penalty for the offence should be lighter.

What the Press Council draft proposal suggests is for "denigrating Turkishness" be removed as a concept from the law and the offence be one of "insulting the Turkish Nation".

At current, the first section of 301 in practice reads as "Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years."

This is followed by the second section "Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security structures shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years".

The Council wants the first section of the article to read as "Public insult of the Turkish Nation, the Turkish Republic State, the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the Turkish Republic Government, the judiciary institutions of the state, the military and police institutions" gathering together the two sections -

and for the offence to be punishable not up to 2 or 3 years but "from three months to 1 year".

A second section proposed by the Council says "expressions of opinion made for the purpose of criticism, publications in the scope of the duty of reporting news, do not constitute an offence.

The final section then proposes to monitor the whole procedure of investigating and prosecuting offences under 301 and reads "opening an investigation under section one depends on permission from the Ministry of Justice".

Eksi: We can't wait for enforcement

Eksi has sent a copy of his letter to Justice Minister Cemil Cicek stressing that the "let's wait to see how its enforced" mentality on 301 is unacceptable. He underlined that many would suffer through such a period until verdicts of judiciary settled and that the prestige of Turkey would also be harmed.

The Press Council chairman also recalled warnings they had made in a meeting on March 12, 2005 when 50 representatives from the Turkish media has a meeting on the issue before article 301 was passed, and that this warning itself had been ignored.

Eksi said articles 125 and 299 of the penal code used the concept of "insult" while 301 used the concept of denigration and said this was a mistake. (EO/II/YE)