Turkey will criminalise adultery

TURKEY'S Islamic-rooted ruling party will press ahead with its plan to criminalise adultery despite earlier statements the controversial measure had been shelved, a party member said yesterday.

The decision came two days after the party said it was abandoning the plan after protests from women's groups and warnings from the European Union that it could jeopardise Turkey's chances of joining.

In revising its proposal, the party has replaced the word "adultery" with "sexual infidelity," a senior member of the ruling party said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Senior opposition figure Ali Topuz - whose party rejects the adultery proposal - said he and other opposition lawmakers were preparing to walk out of parliament if the measure was resubmitted.

"There is pressure on us, we can never accept this," Topuz told CNN-Turk television. "If the adultery proposal comes to the parliament then they bear the responsibility.

"We would do anything we can at the highest level to paralyse the parliament."

The push to outlaw adultery comes as Turkey revises its 78-year-old penal code in the hope of EU membership.

Though the proposed adultery ban has alarmed EU officials, Ankara has been trying to tack it on to the penal code revisions - apparently to appease prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's conservative and devoutly Islamic base.

Some Europeans and Turkish secularists fear Erdogan may be trying to steer the country away from its more than eight decades of strict secularism, instituted by Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Turkey's 70 million people are predominantly Muslim.

During a parliament session yesterday, hardline lawmakers of Erodogan's Justice Development Party forced a two-hour suspension of voting on penal code reforms, objecting to several amendments apparently aimed at strengthening secularism.

The contested amendments would ban Islamic clerics from criticising the government and imprison non-clerics for wearing Islamic attire.

On the revised adultery ban, CNN-Turk reported that Erdogan told his lawmakers to prepare a proposal in line with the demands of the public - which he insists wants adultery outlawed. Amid the tensions, hard-liners met with Erdogan and the Justice Minister Cemil Cicek.