EU forces Turkey to backtrack on adultery

Amid protests from women’s groups and warnings from the EU, Turkey’s government agreed to measures that would appear to scuttle its plans to introduce legislation making adultery a crime.

Government leaders had proposed a ban on adultery as part of a major overhaul of the mostly Muslim country’s 78-year-old penal code, undertaken as the 25 EU states prepare to decide whether to begin talks on Turkey’s membership.

But Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said after a meeting with the leader of the opposition party yesterday that only measures that both his ruling party and the opposition agreed on would be brought to the floor.

Ali Topuz, a senior lawmaker from the opposition Republican People’s Party, made it clear that there would be no consensus on the adultery proposal.

“We’re strongly against the proposal on adultery, and so it will not come to the floor,” Topuz told private CNN-Turk television.

Cicek and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, who met with opposition leader Deniz Baykal, refused to answer questions about the adultery proposal.

The penal code package, which lawmakers began debating yesterday, includes more severe punishments for rapists, pedophiles, torturers, human traffickers and women who kill children born out of wedlock. It also recognizes rape in marriage and sexual harassment as crimes.

The government has been hoping to tack the adultery ban onto the draft penal code, apparently to appease Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s conservative and devoutly Islamic base.

Haluk Ipek, a senior member of the Justice and Development Party, said the government would still push for a consensus on each article of its draft “including adultery”.

But that looked virtually impossible given the opposition’s objections.

The proposal has generated strong criticism in the European Union, where there is already widespread concern about membership for Turkey, whose territory lies mostly in Asia and whose cultural profile is often at odds with the more liberal leanings prevalent across the European continent.

Details of the anti-adultery proposal have not been made public. Cicek said the measure would only be applied if a spouse complains. Ipek said Monday that adulterers could face six months to two years in prison.

The debate over the penal code amendments could last all week.

Erdogan says an adultery law would protect the family and women who have been wronged by their husbands.

Women’s groups counter that such a law would be used against women – who they say could be imprisoned and lose custody of their children. They say the measure would encourage “honour killings” in which family members kill girls or women deemed to have disgraced the family.

About 600 people, most of them women, marched from Ankara’s central square to parliament on Tuesday, holding banners that said “Keep your hands off my body” and “No! to the male-dominated penal code”.