Article 301 is an article of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions. It took effect on June 1, 2005, and was introduced as part of a package of penal law reform in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkish membership of the European Union (EU), in order to bring Turkey up to Union standards.[1][2] The original version of the article made it a crime to "insult Turkishness"; on April 30, 2008, the article was amended to change "Turkishness" into "the Turkish nation". Since this article became law, charges have been brought in more than 60 cases, some of which are high-profile.[3] The Great Jurists Union (Turkish: Büyük Hukukçular Birliği) headed by Kemal Kerinçsiz, a Turkish lawyer, is "behind nearly all of Article 301 trials".[4] Kerinçsiz himself is responsible for forty of the trials,[5] including the high-profile ones.
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