Original sentence: Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code ("Provoking people to be rancorous and hostile") criminalizes blasphemy and religious insult, as well as hate speech.Before winning their independence from the British Empire in the late 18th century, some of the British colonies in North America such as the Province of Massachusetts Bay had blasphemy laws.The 1791 First Amendment effectively put an end to them in the new American republic.The article, which is in the fifth section of the Turkish Penal Code ("Offenses Against Public Peace") is as follows:
Edited sentence: Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code ("Provoking people to be rancorous and hostile") criminalizes religious insults that are likely to disturb the public peace, under a general provision against hate speech.The article, which is in the fifth section of the Turkish Penal Code ("Offenses Against Public Peace"), has been interpreted by some commentators as a law against blasphemy, although Turkey is a secular state and couches the law in secular, nondenominational terms.The law is as follows:.as well as hate speech