A court in Istabul today, Tuesday 31, convicted a former Miss Turkey of
insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through social media postings
and gave her a 14-month suspended sentence.
27-year-old Merve Buyuksarac was found guilty of insulting a public official but immediately
suspended the sentence on condition that she does not reoffend within
the next five years.
Her lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Justice.
Buyuksarac,
who was
crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing a
satirical poem on her Instagram account in 2014. The posting, an
satarical adaptation of the Turkish national anthem, was shared thosands
of times on social media, and it was considered by proscutors to be
insulting to Mr Erdogan, who was then prime minister. Buyuksarac,
however, denied insulting him.
Since
becoming president in 2014, Erdogan has filed close to 2,000 defamation
cases under a previously seldom-used law that bars insulting the
president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to silence and intimidate critics.
The trials have targeted journalists, academics and even schoolchildren. Coupled
with a crackdown on opposition media and journalists, the trials have
sounded alarms over the erosion of rights and freedoms in a country that
was once seen as a model of Muslim democracy.
Erdogan caused an
uproar last month when, on the basis of an archaic German law that
criminalizes insulting foreign heads of state, he went after a German
comedian who mocked him in a profanity-packed poem.
"These insult
trials are being initiated in series, they are being filed
automatically,'' Telci told The Associated Press by telephone after the
verdict. "Merve was prosecuted for sharing a posting that did not belong
to her. My client has been convicted for words that do not belong to
her.''
Thousands of others also posted the poem. It did not mention
Erdogan by name, but alluded to a corruption scandal that allegedly
involved his family.
Before the verdict was announced, Erdogan's
lawyer, Hatice Ozay, argued in court that Buyuksarac's Instagram post
had gone beyond "the limits of criticism'' and amounted to "an attack''
on the Turkish leader's personal rights, the state-run Anadolu Agency
reported.
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