  We propose a binary message passing decoding algorithm for product codes
based on generalized minimum distance decoding (GMDD) of the component codes,
where the last stage of the GMDD makes a decision based on the Hamming distance
metric. The proposed algorithm closes half of the gap between conventional
iterative bounded distance decoding (iBDD) and turbo product decoding based on
the Chase--Pyndiah algorithm, at the expense of some increase in complexity.
Furthermore, the proposed algorithm entails only a limited increase in data
flow compared to iBDD.
