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Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code
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Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code
Article 301 is a lèse-majesté law of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, the Turkish government institutions, or Turkish national heroes such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It took effect on June 1, 2005, and was introduced as part of a package of penal law reform in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkish membership of the European Union (EU). The original version of the article made it a crime to "insult Turkishness"; on April 30, 2008, the article was amended to change "Turkishness" into "the Turkish nation". Since this article became law, charges have been brought in more than 60 cases, some of which are high-profile.
On April 30, 2008 a series of changes were made to Article 301, including a new amendment which makes it obligatory to receive the approval of the Minister of Justice to file a case. This change was made to prevent the possible misuse of the article, especially against high-profile cases, addressing legal holes in the previous version.
The Great Jurists Union (Turkish: Büyük Hukukçular Birliği) headed by Kemal Kerinçsiz, a Turkish lawyer, is "behind nearly all of Article 301 trials." Kerinçsiz himself is responsible for forty of the trials, including the high-profile ones.
The article currently reads as follows:
Before amendments were made to Article 301 on April 30, 2008, the article stated the following:
Before the current Turkish Penal Code took effect, article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code dated 1926 covered the same offense. Among the earliest uses of article 159 was in 1928, when a number of Jews were convicted of "denigrating Turkishness" in the Elza Niego affair.
Article 159 was amended a few times, including in 1961 and 2003, before finally being replaced by the current article 301 in 2005.
Article 301 has been used to bring charges against writer Orhan Pamuk for stating, in an interview with Swiss magazine Das Magazin, a weekly supplement to a number of Swiss daily newspapers, including the Tages-Anzeiger, that "Thirty thousand Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do." The charges, which were brought against Pamuk upon a complaint filed by Kemal Kerinçsiz, were later dropped after the Justice Ministry refused to issue a ruling as to whether the charges should stand.
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Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code
Article 301 is a lèse-majesté law of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, the Turkish government institutions, or Turkish national heroes such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It took effect on June 1, 2005, and was introduced as part of a package of penal law reform in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkish membership of the European Union (EU). The original version of the article made it a crime to "insult Turkishness"; on April 30, 2008, the article was amended to change "Turkishness" into "the Turkish nation". Since this article became law, charges have been brought in more than 60 cases, some of which are high-profile.
On April 30, 2008 a series of changes were made to Article 301, including a new amendment which makes it obligatory to receive the approval of the Minister of Justice to file a case. This change was made to prevent the possible misuse of the article, especially against high-profile cases, addressing legal holes in the previous version.
The Great Jurists Union (Turkish: Büyük Hukukçular Birliği) headed by Kemal Kerinçsiz, a Turkish lawyer, is "behind nearly all of Article 301 trials." Kerinçsiz himself is responsible for forty of the trials, including the high-profile ones.
The article currently reads as follows:
Before amendments were made to Article 301 on April 30, 2008, the article stated the following:
Before the current Turkish Penal Code took effect, article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code dated 1926 covered the same offense. Among the earliest uses of article 159 was in 1928, when a number of Jews were convicted of "denigrating Turkishness" in the Elza Niego affair.
Article 159 was amended a few times, including in 1961 and 2003, before finally being replaced by the current article 301 in 2005.
Article 301 has been used to bring charges against writer Orhan Pamuk for stating, in an interview with Swiss magazine Das Magazin, a weekly supplement to a number of Swiss daily newspapers, including the Tages-Anzeiger, that "Thirty thousand Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do." The charges, which were brought against Pamuk upon a complaint filed by Kemal Kerinçsiz, were later dropped after the Justice Ministry refused to issue a ruling as to whether the charges should stand.