ANKARA, Sept 7 (AFP) - Plans to outlaw adultery have provoked a furious reaction from secular and women's rights organizations in Turkey, and could damage the Muslim country's aspirations to join the European Union.
The ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), with roots in political Islam, last week introduced a bill to recriminalize adultery eight years after it was struck from the statute book.
The bill is to go before parliament -- where the AKP has a nearly two-thirds majority -- on September 14 as part of a vast overhaul of the country's penal code.
The reforms include the abolition of torture and expansion of individual liberties, as the EU Commission in Brussels keeps a watchful eye on efforts by EU hopeful Ankara.
But the strong words in Turkish media, from feminists and from human rights organizations -- as well as a cautionary warning by an EU spokesman just as the enlargement commissioner visits Turkey -- shows how unpopular the measure is.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended the proposal, calling it an attempt to maintain "family values."
"We want to preserve family values. If the family disintegrates, the country is doomed to destruction," Erdogan, a devout Muslim in a strictly secular country, told Turkish television, in comments seen as a sop to ultra-conservatives.
"A senseless debate," Ilknur Ustun, spokeswoman for the women's right's organization Kader, said angrily.
"Marriage is governed by the civil code, why make it a part of the penal code?" she told AFP. "There is not a single EU country where adultery is a criminal offense."
Other women's groups and secular organizations have accused the government of trying to snoop around in people's private lives when a lot remains to be done before men and women have equal standing.
The Turkish Constitutional Court in 1996 struck down the previous law against adultery because it penalized women more than men. A woman faced up to three years in jail if she had sex just once outside marriage, while a man could only be sentenced if there was proof he was regularly cheating on his wife.
The new proposal treats women and men equally, with lawmakers still to determine the specific penalties.
"This is a real step backwards," women's rights activist and lawyer Senel Sarihan said. Criminalizing adultery "exists only in countries where there is (Islamic) Sharia law," abolished in 1924 after the founding of Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, she added.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the bill should not overshadow the many reforms already enacted by Ankara, which is anxiously awaiting the go-ahead from Brussels to begin membership talks later this year.
"This is a proposal for a reform among others ... we must not let this proposal cast a shadow over all the reforms that have already been made and those still to be carried out," Gul told journalists at an EU foreign ministers meeting in the Netherlands Saturday.
But Turkish newspapers quoted the spokesman for enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who Monday began a five-day visit to Turkey, as saying the bill could "harm Turkey's image."
"Such a law could harm Turkey's image in its reform process," Jean-Christophe Filori said before the commissioner's trip. "All positive developments could be overshadowed." Verheugen himself Monday refused to comment.
Commentators in the Turkish press have meanwhile focused on prime minister Erdogan's reference to family values.
If a woman denounces her philandering husband, he would go to jail, Fatih Altayli wrote in the mass-market Hurriyet daily. "How would the family be protected with a father in prison?"
The same would apply to a woman found guilty of adultery, who would "become a 'prostitute' in the eyes of society ... would that protect family unity?"
Verheugen said Monday the moment of truth on Ankara's EU membership bid was rapidly approaching -- and that nothing could postpone the decision in December. Making adultery a crime is however unlikely to endear Ankara to the 25-nation bloc.
Retired teacher Lebibe Taskin had only one thing to say. "Mind your own business. The state should stay out of my bedroom."