Amendment in Article 301 and Its Effects on EU-Turkey Relations
Amendment in Article 301 and Its Effects on EU-Turkey Relations

Summary/Abstract: Article 301 of Turkish Criminal Code was amended as we emphasized in the USAK/ISRO paper prepared by ISRO Centre for EU Studies and dated December 2007: “Turkish Criminal Code (TCC) Article 301 and 301s of the European Union”. Article 301 is the one of the most debatable issues in the EU accession process with its limiting characteristic of freedom of speech. It is known that since the new Criminal Code came into effect in 2005 there has been an increase in the number of the cases sued in the framework of article 301. Since 2002, in the framework of the article 301, there have been 1481 cases and 745 of those resulted in conviction of the accused. An increasing number of cases have made the issue a litmus paper for Turkey-EU relations and the EU officials have begun to put the article on the agenda.

• Details
• Contents