Article 299 (Turkish Criminal Code)
In Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code (tStGB), insulting ( hakaret ) the President of the Republic of Turkey is separately punishable. The head of state is granted protection of honor that is more stringent than Art. 125 tStGB. Paragraph 2 provides for an increase in the penalty for public offenses. For criminal prosecution, the authorization of the Minister of Justice is required (paragraph 3).
text
The article, last amended on July 8, 2005, belongs to the third section of the Criminal Code, which also regulates the denigration of state emblems (Article 300), and contains the more well-known Article 301 , which “the degradation of the Turkish nation, the State of the Republic of Turkey , the state institutions and bodies ”. In contrast to Art. 301, Art. 299 does not already depend on (public prosecutor's) investigations, but only the (judicial) prosecution on the authorization of the Minister of Justice. The wording of Art. 299 is as follows:
Cumhurbaşkanına hakaret
Madde 299
(1) Cumhurbaşkanına hakaret eden kişi, bir yıldan dört yıla kadar hapis cezası ile cezalandırılır.
(2) Suçun alenen işlenmesi hâlinde, verilecek ceza altıda biri oranında artırılır.
(3) Bu suçtan dolayı kovuşturma yapılması, Adalet Bakanının iznine bağlıdır.
Insulting the President of the Republic
Art. 299
(1) Anyone who insults the President of the Republic is punished with between one and four years in prison.
(2) If the act is committed publicly, the penalty is increased by one sixth.
(3) The prosecution of this criminal offense depends on the authorization of the Minister of Justice.
history
Before the completely new Criminal Code came into force under the Erdoğan government, Article 158 of the old 1926 Criminal Code regulated insulting the President. The original version provided for a penitentiary of at least three years for persons who insulted the president in his presence or through publications. Verbal insult in absentia was punished with imprisonment from one year to three years. The law was amended on July 25, 1931. There were other changes to the wording later. As of 2001, the article belonged to the first chapter of the second book "Crimes against the personality of the state" and there to the second section "Crimes against state authority". The wording of this article was as follows:
Madde 158
Reisicumhura muvacehesinde hakaret ve sövme fiillerini işleyenler üç seneden aşağı olmamak
üzere ağır hapis cezası ile cezalandırılır.
Hakaret ve sövme Reisicumhurun gıyabında vâkı olmuş ise, faili, bir seneden üç seneye kadar
hapis olunur. Reisicumhurun ismi sarahaten zikredilmeyerek ima veya telmih suretiyle
vaki olsa bile mahiyeti itibariyle Reisicumhura matufiyetinde tereddüt edilmiyecek derecede
karineler varsa tecavüz sarahaten vukubulmuş addolunur.
Suçun, neşir vasıtalarından biri ile işlenmesi halinde ceza üçte birden yarıya kadar
artırılır.
Art. 158
Anyone who slanders or insults the President of the Republic in his presence
will be punished with penal servitude for no less than three years.
If the defamation or insult of the President of the Republic takes place in his absence
, the offender will be punished with imprisonment from one year to three years. The circumstances
leave no doubt that this attack, by its nature, is directed at the person of the President of the
Republic, it shall be deemed to have been given even if it was carried out
by suggestion or allusion without explicit mention of the name of the President of the Republic.
If the offense is committed through a publication medium, the penalty is increased by a third
to a half.
Article 160 paragraph 2 of the old Criminal Code reads:
158'inci maddede yazılı hal […] hakkında takibat yapılması Adalet Bakanlığının iznine bağlıdır.
Prosecution in the case of Art. 158 […] is dependent on the authorization of the Ministry of Justice.
Handling under Erdoğan's presidency
In the first seven months of Erdoğan's tenure as president, the justice minister issued 105 prosecution authorizations for 236 applications. Eight of these cases were imprisoned. In comparison, during Abdullah Gül's seven-year term of office, 1359 applications were granted 545 powers of attorney, and none of the cases resulted in imprisonment. At the beginning of March 2016, the Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ announced that his ministry had issued prosecution powers during Erdoğan's term of office in 1845. According to Ankara University political scientist Kerem Altıparmak, this is a 500 percent increase compared to Ahmet Necdet Sezer's tenure in 2007, when 27 court cases were reported. The procedures affect Facebook entries as well as banners during demonstrations. A court case in Diyarbakır caused a sensation against two children aged 12 and 13 who had torn up an Erdoğan poster and who are now despite an expert opinion that they lacked judgment (cf. Art. 31 (2) tStGB) faced imminent imprisonment. The deputy chairman of the Halkların Demokratik Partisi Ahmet Yıldırım was sentenced to 14 months in prison for referring to President Erdoğan as a cartoon in office in 2015. In addition to the criminal cases, Erdoğan's lawyers opened numerous civil lawsuits demanding compensation for insults amounting to many millions of TL. Turkish daily newspapers such as Taraf and Radikal see the investigations and trials as encroaching on freedom of expression and as a means of intimidating the opposition. Christian Rumpf writes:
“The fact that a state president enjoys special protection of honor arises from the nature of his office. However, a regulation like that of Art. 299 StGB ( Cumhurbaşkanına hakaret - insulting the President of the Republic ) acquires a critical dimension in an environment where the President of the Republic himself exceeds the limits set for him by the constitution and thus gives the public special targets for criticism offers. If the trade-off between the protection of honor on the one hand and freedom of expression on the other hand is not always easy among private individuals, this is even more true in political life. The fact that the prosecution of such an act requires the approval of the Ministry of Justice [sic] raises further questions, because the executive can intervene in the proper functioning of the judiciary, i.e. ultimately decides how far the honor is of the President and where their worthy of protection ends. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Translation of Silvia Tellenbach: The Turkish Penal Code. Turk Ceza Kanunu. Law no. 5237 of September 26, 2004 as of November 15, 2008 (= series of publications by the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. Collection of foreign criminal codes in German translation. Volume G 118). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-428-13024-5 , p. 189 f.
- ↑ Law No. 765 of March 1, 1926, Official Gazette No. 320 of March 13, 1926 ( PDF file; 4.0 MB ). German translation Silvia Tellenbach: The Turkish Penal Code. Türk Ceza Kanunu of March 1, 1926 as of January 31, 2001 (= collection of foreign penal codes in German translation. Volume 110). 2nd Edition. Edition iuscrim, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001, ISBN 3-86113-921-9 .
-
↑ Article 158 of the old penal code reads in its original version:
ماده ١٥٨ ـ رئیس جمهوره قارشی مواجهه سنده حقارت ایدنلر ویا رئیس جمهور علیهنه تجاوزکارانه نشمشر یووه بنهود نودر آشحووچ بنهون ل الوچ نممچر حووچ بنهون الغیوچر لوچ بنون موچ الوچ محوچ نمهوچ موچر حووچ بنهون موچ مچوچ لموچ قموچ بنونر لووچ الغیموچ لموچ ال.
رئیس جمهور علیهنه غیابنده لسانا تجاوزاتده بولونانلر بر سنه دن اوچ سنه یه قادار حبس اولونور. - ^ Text from the archive of the Ministry of Justice of Turkey
- ^ Translation of Silvia Tellenbach: The Turkish Penal Code. Türk Ceza Kanunu of March 1, 1926 as of January 31, 2001 (= collection of foreign penal codes in German translation. Volume 110). 2nd Edition. Edition iuscrim, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001, ISBN 3-86113-921-9 , p. 79 f.
- ^ Translation of Silvia Tellenbach: The Turkish Penal Code. Türk Ceza Kanunu of March 1, 1926 as of January 31, 2001 (= collection of foreign penal codes in German translation. Volume 110). 2nd Edition. Edition iuscrim, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001, ISBN 3-86113-921-9 , p. 81.
- ↑ Report: Erdogan files 'insult' complaints against 236 people in 227 days ( Memento of the original from April 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (factsonturkey.org, March 26, 2015)
- ↑ Adalet Bakanı Bozdağ, 'Cumhurbaşkanı'na hakaret' davalarının sayısını açıkladı , T24 of March 2, 2016 (Turkish)
- ↑ 'İşlediği suçu algılamıyor' raporuna rağmen çocuğa dava açmışlar , daily newspaper Radikal, October 28, 2016 (Turkish)
- ↑ "Güncel Hukuk" journal , October 2015
- ↑ Erdoğan'ı koruma kanunu ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Taraf of October 11, 2015 (Turkish)
- ↑ Yeni 301'imiz hayırlı uğurlu olsun: TCK 299 , Radikal of October 6, 2015 (Turkish)
- ^ Christian Rumpf: Introduction to Turkish law (= series of legal training. Volume 169). 2nd fundamentally revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-65766-5 , p. 374 (§ 26 marginal number 241).
