Turkey to pass free speech reform next week: PM

(ANKARA) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that parliament would next week pass a long-awaited bill softening a controversial law which penalises "insulting Turkishness".

"I believe we will push the amendment to Article 301 through parliament next week," Erdogan said in a televised address to the parliamentary group of his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Article 301 in the penal code allows for up to three years in jail for "insulting Turkishness" and has long been criticised as a threat to freedom of speech in both Turkey and the European Union, which Ankara hopes to join.

The government submitted to parliament a draft amendment late Monday, ahead of a visit by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who will arrive here Thursday.

The proposal calls for the president's approval before prosecutors can launch cases, in a bid to make trials under the article more difficult.

It also replaces the term "Turkishness" -- which critics say is too broad and vague -- with the "Turkish nation" and decreases the envisaged jail term to a maximum of two years, which would allow the sentence to be suspended or converted to a fine.

It also removes a provision that calls for an increased sanction if the crime is committed abroad.

The AKP is expected to have no difficulty in passing the amendment as it dominates the 550-seat parliament with 340 lawmakers.

Dozens of intellectuals, including 2006 Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been tried under the provision and although some -- including ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who was murdered in January 2007 -- were convicted, their sentences were suspended and no one has been jailed so far.

The article has been used mainly against people contesting the official line on the World War I massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which, much to Turkey's ire, many countries have recognised as genocide.