"Turkey says law may change after EU deputy probed
Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:19 PM GMT15
By Zerin Elci
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's foreign minister said on Wednesday it might be necessary to change a controversial law after nationalist lawyers used it to call for the prosecution of an EU lawmaker for criticising the Turkish military.
The lawyers accuse Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, of insulting Turkey's armed forces by suggesting the military was provoking Kurdish rebels in south-east Turkey in order to boost its influence.
The group has already embarrassed the government by launching prosecutions of novelist Orhan Pamuk and other writers under Article 301 of the penal code, which makes it an offence to insult 'Turkishness' or state institutions like the military."
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