Deputy Prime Minister announces new legislation for jailed journalists

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc and Culture and Tourism Minister Omer Celik visited Ankara's stand which has received great attention from visitors at the ITB 2013 Berlin International Tourism Fair and received information on the tourism sector in Ankara. Speaking on the sidelines of the fair, Arinc responded to questions from reporters. Stating that a new law which will decriminalize the creation and publication of propaganda discouraging violence will be discussed soon, Arinc said that journalists who have been imprisoned on these charges might be released in accordance with the new law. "A draft legislation is about to be brought to Parliament [in the next few] days. We are hoping to announce at the Council of Ministers meeting on March 11 that even if a person makes propaganda, as long as it doesn't steer the masses toward weapons and violence, it will no longer be considered a crime. I believe that the imprisoned journalists on the grounds of violating this article of the law will benefit from this amendment," Arınc said. Celik also held a press conference with journalists as part of the fair. Underlining that Turkey's political system should be totally renewed, Celik noted that the Kurdish issue could be solved neither through the IRA nor ETA model. "Solution should be totally domestic," Celik said. Stating that a "state-nation" system built up in 19th century lies behind the problem Celik said, "A ‘state-nation' system belonging to the 19th century considered every kind of democratic demand as a virus and developed an antivirus programme. All of the democracies throughout the world have updated their systems, but unfortunately we could not have done this over the years. The degradation of freedom issues, especially the definition of citizenship only to Kurdish issue is not right. Demands over the inclusion of the term ‘Kurdish' in the new constitution are a primitive approach."