Turkey has taken another step back in human rights by repressing freedom of expression with a code that carries such stigma it has proved deadly.
In the early 2000s, it was almost routine for writers and intellectuals in Turkey to appear in the corridors of courthouses, one after another. At times they would have to deal with the insults, taunts and threats of angry mobs waiting there for them. The accusation against them was usually the same: denigrating the Turkish identity and the Turkish state under the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code.