How Cheap Is Talk?
¶ It’s great to read, in an AP story from Strasbourg, that Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president who made Turkey’s liberal elites shake in their shoes earlier this year, only to win a handy victory in August, is committed to revising Turkey’s Article 103, the controversial law that criminalizes “insults to Turkish identity” – whatever that means. The international attention that was focused on Turkey during the dark days in which Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk was up for trial for violating 103 appears to have embarrassed Turkish cultural conservatives into reconsidering the law, which is something of a vague but blunt instrument that leaves too much power in the hands of opportunistic prosecutors.
“No one is going to prison for expressing their views freely,” [Mr Gul] told representatives of the council. The Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, seeks to develop common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other documents.
That’s good to hear. Now, let’s see what actually happens.
¶ Neela Banerjee’s “Panel Says Episcopalians Have Met Anglican Directive” is not, unfortunately, the easiest story to follow, but after sifting through it several times I came to the conclusion that the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is playing Bushie games when she claims to be “gratified” that the American church’s panel has opted to comply with Anglican Communion strictures on recent liberalizing moves. It pains me to say this, because my sympathies are all with the supporters of W Gene Robinson, gay bishop of New Hampshire – and because I become positively redneck when I think that a gang of African prelates whose not-so-distant ancestors, at least according to Evelyn Waugh, were probably cannibals, are directing the affairs of a venerable American sect. It would appear, however, that the Communion conservatives are right to cock an eyebrow at Bishop Jefferts Schori’s conciliatory utterances. As Ms Banerjee’s editor, I’d have yanked “victory” from her opening sentence.