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Turkey May Amend Freedom of Speech Laws

By SUZAN FRASER

Associated Press Writer

December 28, 2005, 5:57 PM EST

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s foreign minister said Wednesday that laws limiting freedom of _expression may be changed, acknowledging that charges against a top novelist had tarnished the country’s image.

It was the first time the government indicated it could amend laws making it a crime to insult Turkey. The trial against Orhan Pamuk has drawn sharp criticism from European officials as Turkey strives to join the 25-member EU.

But Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the government would likely wait for the outcome of trials against Pamuk and dozens of other people before changing any laws.

“Laws are not untouchable,” he said in an interview with private NTV television. “If necessary we can change these laws. However, first we will see how these laws are interpreted.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week that “freedoms are not limitless.”

Pamuk is on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper in February that “30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”

The novelist’s remarks highlighted two of the most painful episodes in Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I — which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide — and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.

On Tuesday, prosecutors said they were considering charges against a Dutch member of the European Parliament, Joost Lagendijk, for insulting Turkey’s armed forces, a move that could further strain relations with the EU.

He reportedly told Turkish journalists that the military was provoking clashes with Kurdish rebels.

Gul told NTV that Pamuk’s trial and the Lagendijk issue had caused as much damage to Turkey’s image as the 1978 Oliver Stone movie “Midnight Express,” about a young American caught for drug-smuggling and brutalized by Turkish jailers.

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