Yes without ‘but'

Leaked details about the new legislation suggest that it tightens the definitions of terrorism and will prevent people from being jailed just for expressing their views. Only a direct incitement to commit violence would be considered unlawful. The reforms are also expected to include new provisions for conscientious objectors and stricter rules to curb torture and police violence.

All this is welcome, if long overdue. For the thousands of detainees who have been languishing behind bars, for their friends and their families, the new rules will clearly have a direct and positive impact.

One should not look a gift horse in the mouth, the saying goes. By the same token, any move to curb the current repressive laws and to solve the Kurdish problem must be celebrated. Unfortunately, there always seems to be a “but” because unless the reforms are based on principles and a genuine belief in the rights of individuals rather than on ever-shifting political circumstances, these achievements will remain fragile and vulnerable to sudden reversals.

This somewhat cynical assessment is based on past evidence. How many laws that were used to jail people on political grounds have been amended or lifted in Turkey in the past two decades? In many cases, the legislation either reappeared through the back door in a modified form, or the judicial authorities, whenever they felt there was such a need, switched to other legal instruments, drawing on Turkey's wide arsenal of laws that were open to subjective interpretation.

This raises the question of what made the detainees currently behind bars -- allegedly members of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) or journalists -- so dangerous yesterday that they had to be locked up pending trial, but they can be freed under new legislation? Was the legislation itself the problem, or was it the way in which it was interpreted?

The fourth package can only be a beginning that has to be followed by a change of mentality. Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin has denied it, but the timing of this package is widely seen as linked to the İmralı process. If the end result is a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem and better democratic standards in Turkey, the doubts about the government's motivations and the long time that it took for this package to be introduced will disappear. But at this point, everything in Turkish politics appears indexed to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's presidential ambitions and his desire to boost the powers of the presidency in the constitution that is currently being drafted.

Politics anywhere in the world involves a lot of give and take, and any road that leads to a peaceful resolution of Turkey's most pressing issue should be travelled. But fundamental rights are a bottom line that should not be open to bargaining. Yet democratic reforms are still too rarely discussed for their own sake, simply because politicians -- wherever they fit on the political spectrum -- believe that improving the human rights climate is a positive step in itself and that individual citizens should be free to express their views.

Instead, steps to broaden freedoms are too often taken as if they were concessions reluctantly granted in response to external circumstances. While welcoming moves in the right direction, it is worth keeping in mind that lasting and irreversible progress will only be achieved when legal reforms can be introduced without a nagging “but” and when the country's rulers can improve democratic standards and individual freedoms, not because doing so suits their political calculations, but for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.