SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A Turkish court on Saturday ordered well-known journalist Sedef Kabas to be jailed pending trial on a charge of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, her lawyer said.
CNN Turk reported that police detained Kabas at around 2 a.m. (2300 GMT) and took her first to Istanbul’s main police station before transferring her to the city’s main courthouse, where a court subsequently ruled in favour of her formal arrest, according to Reuters.
The alleged insult was in the form of a palace-related proverb that Kabas expressed both on an opposition television channel and on her Twitter account, drawing condemnation from government officials, Reuters reported.
“The honour of the presidency’s office is the honour of our country… I condemn the vulgar insults made against our president and his office,” Reuters quoted Fahrettin Altun, head of Turkey’s Communications Directorate, as saying on Twitter.
Merdan Yanardag, chief editor of the Tele 1 channel on which Kabas made the comment, sharply criticized her arrest.
“Her detention overnight at 2 a.m. because of a proverb is unacceptable,” he wrote on Twitter. “This stance is an attempt to intimidate journalists, the media and society.”
The law on insulting the president carries a jail sentence of between one and four years.
“A so-called journalist is blatantly insulting our president on a television channel that has no goal other than spreading hatred,” Erdogan’s chief spokesman Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter, according to AFP.
“I condemn this arrogance, this immorality in the strongest possible terms. This is not only immoral, it is also irresponsible,” Altun said.
But the Turkish journalists’ union called Kabas’ arrest a “serious attack on freedom of expression”.
Rights groups routinely accuse Turkey of undermining media freedom by arresting journalists and shutting down critical media outlets, especially since Erdogan survived a failed coup in July 2016.
Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 153rd out of 180 in its 2021 press freedom index.
Thousands have been charged and sentenced over the crime of insulting Erdogan in the seven years since he moved from being prime minister to president.
In 2020, 31,297 investigation were launched in relation to the charge, 7,790 cases were filed and 3,325 resulted in convictions, according to Justice Ministry data. Those numbers were slightly lower than the previous year.
Since 2014, the year Erdogan became president, 160,169 investigations were launched over insulting the president, 35,507 cases were filed and there were 12,881 convictions, Reuters reported.
