Government Urges for Penalty on Adultery
However, it is well known that many leaders or militants of this Islamist party are married with several women on the basis of polygamy authorized by the Islamic law (Sharia).
In spite of severe criticism, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has defended the bill. In an interview published Saturday by the daily Sabah, Erdogan indicated that Turkey should not always blindly imitate Europe. "The family is a sacred establishment for us. The stronger the family is, the more the country is strong. If the family is weakened, this country is condemned to the destruction, "said Erdogan.
The chief of the Turkish diplomacy Abdullah Gul estimated Saturday that the discussed project should not make forgotten the pro-European reforms implemented by Ankara.
"It is a proposal of reform among the others (...) It should not shade all the reforms which were already made or will be made," he told journalists during a meeting with his counterpart at the EU in Valkenburg (south-eastern of the Netherlands).
However, on Saturday, the spokesman for the Commissioner on Enlargement, Mr. Jean-Christophe Filori declared that this plan could tarnish the image of Turkey and make more difficult its adhesion to the European Union.
The article on adultery appears in a vast reform of the penal code that the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Islamist, wishes to make adopt counting on its large majority at the National Assembly.
The declared goal of this reform is to increase the chances of the country to obtain a green light of the European leaders, in December, for starting the negotiations on adhesion to the EU.
But the question of the extra conjugal sexual relations supplanted all other reforms.
The women organizations and the secular circles qualify this bill scandalous and accuse the government of social regression and attack to the private life whereas the country has to make still much to ensure a true equality between men and women, claimed by the EU.
"It is a return back with regard to the European criteria. This provision exists only in the countries where there is Sharia!" abolished after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the lawyer Senel Sarihan says.
She also says convinced that the EU will never accept such a "retrograde" law.
"Whatever do I, the State does not have anything to see in my sleeping-room!" Lebibe Taskin, 55-year old retired teacher declared to AFP. She recalled that the civil code already represses adultery by regarding it as a cause of divorce. "Why then they insist to include it in the penal code?" she said.
The Turkish constitutional Court had abolished in 1996 the provisions of the penal code on adultery, considering them contrary to the equality of the sexes.
By this initiative against the respect of private life and the equality of sexes, the Turkish government comes against the universal values of the humans right and already gives a sign what it can impose on the society once the door of the European Union is opened to Turkey during this Islamist power. (EK)