Former Miss Turkey Gets 14-MonthSuspended Sentence for Insulting President Erdogan
"Guilty of insulting a public official"
5.31.2016
12
This is what happens when totalitarians limit free speech.
Former Miss Turkey Merve Buyuksarac, 27, received a 14-month suspended prison sentence on Tuesday for "insulting President Tayyip Erdogan through a poem she shared on Instagram," according to Reuters.
"Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail in Turkey," reports Reuters. "The law was used infrequently until Erdogan won the presidency in August 2014, since which time prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases for insulting him, including against cartoonists, journalists and teenagers."
Fortunately for Buyuksarac, an Istanbul court withheld jail time after being found guilty of "insulting a public official," suspending her sentence so long as "she does not repeat the act for the next five years."
Merve Buyuksarac has worked as a model after being crowned Miss Turkey in 2006. Turkish authorities briefly detained her last year for sharing a poem titled "The Master's Poem" on her Instagram in 2014.
The former beauty queen's lawyer, Emre Telci, told the Associated Press that Buyuksarac had been unfairly prosecuted for words that "do not belong to her."
"These insult trials are being initiated in series, they are being filed automatically." said Telci. "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."
In a court post, a lawyer for president Erdogan said the poem went beyond "the limits of criticism" that amounted "attack against my client's personal rights."
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