TURKEY appears to have dropped controversial plans to criminalise adultery after weeks of fierce debate at home and sharp criticism from the European Union.
Despite earlier insistence to the contrary, MPs confirmed that the 346 draft laws presented to parliament yesterday as part of a sweeping penal code reform did not include the expected proposal to jail adulterers.
“Adultery is a crime in many religions, but in today’s world I think it has more of a place as part of marriage laws, not the penal code,” said Cavit Torun, an MP for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK) and a member of the parliamentary human rights commission.
The penal reforms, which are aimed at increasing rights and freedoms in the mainly Muslim country, were framed over the past months to boost Turkey’s EU membership application. The Government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, has been shaken by the opposition to its plans to jail adulterers, which were put forward in the belief that most Turks would be in favour of such action.
“Punishing adultery was just an idea put forward by the Government,” Koksal Toptan, the head of the parliamentary justice commission, said. “It has been blown out of all proportion.”
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Although it is theoretically possible for MPs to introduce a proposal on adultery during the week-long debate, the agreement by the Government and Opposition to make any additional proposals jointly rules out this option.
Sources close to the Government say that MPs soon realised that the idea of including jail terms for adultery into the reform package was a political blunder, coming just weeks before the European Commission’s key report on Turkey’s progress towards becoming the EU’s first Muslim member.
Turkey has already abolished the death penalty, revolutionised its hardline view on Cyprus, reduced the role of the powerful military in politics and granted wider cultural freedom to its large minority of Kurdish citizens over the past two years.
Implementation of the penal code reforms is likely to be difficult, as it has proved with earlier changes, but Ankara believes that it will have done enough to secure a date to open EU membership talks.