Turkey’s governing Justice and Development party (AKP) carried out a constitutional revolution after it first came to power in 2002, putting in place the political and civic freedoms necessary to qualify for accession talks with the European Union that began in 2005. But then it stopped, partly because Turks reacted very badly to the hostility to their membership demonstrated in member states such as France and Germany, and perhaps because its leader, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seemed to lose interest in Europe.

It should therefore be welcome – in principle – that the AKP-dominated parliament has just amended Article 301 of the penal code. This law, criminalising alleged insults to “Turkishness”, has severely damaged Turkey’s reputation. Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, was prosecuted under it; Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish editor shot dead in Istanbul last year, was convicted under it.