The US State Department’s 2009 Annual Report on Human Rights, released on Thursday, notes the improvement in Turkey’s Article 301, which originally criminalized “insulting Turkishness” and which was amended by Parliament to bring Turkey’s laws up to par with the European Union by changing the definition and requiring permission from the justice minister for a prosecutor to charge a person with an Article 301-related crime. Critics of the article say that the terms are still vague enough to allow arbitrary prosecution.
The October 2005 conviction of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink by an İstanbul court for insulting “Turkishness” is widely considered to have indirectly led to his assassination in January 2007 by a militant nationalist. Recalling the amendment of the article in 2008, the report stated that it provides for greater separation between the court and ideologically motivated attorneys by requiring the approval of the justice minister for charges of violating Article 301 to proceed to court.
“However, prosecutors continued to conduct ideologically motivated investigations, such as those involving allegations of insulting the state. A separate law forbids insults to the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and was also used by prosecutors to conduct ideologically motivated investigations during the year. Observers reported that investigations based on both provisions decreased substantially from past years,” the report said.
“According to the Justice Ministry, the justice minister received 424 complaints concerning article 301 during the year and rejected 358 of them. Only four were given permission to proceed, a substantial decrease over the previous year. A total of 55 files remained under consideration at year’s end.
According to the HRF [the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV)], 18 persons were prosecuted during the year under article 301, also a substantial decrease over the previous year,” the report added.
The State Department’s 2008 Annual Report on Human Rights, which also mentioned the amendment to Article 301, had noted at the time that: “[then-] Justice Minister [Mehmet Ali] Şahin reported that the court continued 527 Article 301 cases during the year, after concluding 217 cases in 2007. After May 15, the Ministry of Justice received 519 applications to initiate a court case under amended Article 301 charges. The minister granted permission for 70 cases to proceed.”
