Rice lauds Turkey on free speech, urges more rights
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday commended Turkey's government for seeking to revise a law that limits free speech, but urged it also to protect the rights of religious minorities.
In remarks to the American Turkish Council in Washington, Rice encouraged predominantly Muslim Turkey, a key U.S. and NATO ally, to stay true to democratic secular principles.
"We commend Prime Minister (Tayyip) Erdogan for stating recently that parliament will amend Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which criminalizes insulting Turkishness," she said.
Turkey's ruling AK party submitted to parliament last week the long-awaited revision to the law, which has been used to prosecute dozens of writers, including Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.
"Expressing one's belief is not an insult to the state, it is one of the highest forms of citizenship," Rice said.
Turkish government officials acknowledge the law has embarrassed Turkey abroad, but reform has been delayed several times because of opposition from nationalists.
Rice said Turkey should also respect the rights of religious groups such as its Greek Orthodox community by allowing a training college for priests shut down in the 1970s to reopen.
"We continue to encourage Turkey to recognize and protect the civil rights of all religious and ethnic groups, such as by reopening the Ecumenical Patriarch's Halki seminary as a vocational school," she said.
Rice also said she was following closely a prosecutor's attempt to ban Turkey's ruling AK party for alleged Islamist activities.
"We believe and hope this will be decided within Turkey's secular democratic context and by secular democratic principles," she said.
Turkey has been locked in a political crisis since a chief prosecutor in March asked the Constitutional Court to shut down the AK Party and ban its leaders, including Erdogan, from politics for five years.
Erdogan, whose party has roots in political Islam and was re-elected last year, says he does not expect the party will be closed down, but the case has rattled investors and prompted concern in the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join.
Rice said Washington continued to "strongly" support Turkey's EU bid.
(Editing by Alan Elsner)
