Vrijheid van meningsuiting in Turkije: belangrijke hervorming onderweg (en)
The Turkish parliament is next week likely to pass a bill softening a law which sets limits on freedom of the speech by criminalizing insults to "Turkishness".
One article in the country's penal code - article 301 - currently imposes up to three years in prison for such an insult.
Many Turkish intellectuals and writers have been tried under the article, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.
"I believe we will push the amendment to Article 301 through parliament next week," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday (8 April), according to press agencies.
Late on Monday, the Turkish government submitted its draft proposal for amendments to the parliament, suggesting, among other things, that the country's president should give his consent before prosecutors can launch cases in that field.
It also proposes that the vague term "Turkishness" be replaced by "Turkish nation", and the prison time envisaged be decreased from three to two years while the sentence could be suspended or converted to a fine, AFP reports.
The move comes just days before a visit to Turkey on Thursday and Friday by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn.
The EU has repeatedly called on EU candidate Turkey to "repeal or amend without delay" the controversial article as a prerequisite to join the bloc.
The article has mostly been used against those who refuse to follow Turkey's official line on the killings of Armenians during World War I, by for example referring to the events as "genocide" - a term Ankara categorically rejects.
The amendment is expected to be adopted without difficulty in the country's parliament, as the governing Justice and Development (AKP) party maintains a majority of 340 deputies in the 550-seat parliament.
Turkey has been an EU candidate country since 1999, and launched accession talks with the bloc in October 2005. Progress has been slow and it has so far opened six out the 35 chapters needed in order for the accession negotiations to be closed.
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