Former Miss Turkey Handed Jail Sentence For ‘Insulting’ The Turkish President On Instagram

 Tayyip Erdogan

Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a big bully who gets off on terrorising other people, something that has been established again and again through his actions.

Last year, a Turkish journalist was prosecuted for sharing a photo on social media comparing Erdogan to Gollum from Lord of the Rings, a piece of harmless fun that he found it in himself to get offended by.

Currently, Germany is prosecuting a comedian for a sketch he did, again, making fun of Erdogan- one which he threw a fit over and insisted Germany make the man pay for.

Such a man, a small, weak, pathetic disgrace to our species, who gets offended by the smallest slights and is working as hard as he can to strip away any kind of free expression from his country- it is not surprising that his latest action is just as abominable as the earlier ones.

READ ALSO:  It Will Take More Than Prayers And Speaking In Tongues To Develop Ghana - Kennedy Agyapong

Merve Buyuksarac, Miss Turkey 2006, has been convicted of insulting the President, and handed a 14 month suspended jail sentence. Her crime- sharing a satirical poem that supposedly insulted Erdogan.

The poem, called ‘The Master’s Poem’, criticised the President in its satire; but Merve said she shared it because she found it funny.

miss-turkey

Miss Turkey 2006- Merve Buyuksarac

“I shared it because I found it funny. I had no intention to insult President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” she said, when her case first came up.

But prosecutors disagreed, and fought to get her a jail sentence. She was handed a suspended 14 month sentence, which means she would serve no jail time, unless she breaks a law within that time frame, upon which the sentence would be automatically triggered.

Erdogan came to power in 2014, and soon after brushed up an old law making insulting the President a crime- one which he has since been using to jail or threaten dissenters ever since.

READ ALSO:  A "Ghana Beyond Aid" And Still Accepting Microsoft Computer, Is That One Too A Ghana Beyond Aid? - Amissah-Arthur

One non negotiable requisite of a free society is the ability to express oneself freely, duh; and prosecuting people for the simple fact of holding dissenting opinions, whether insults or not, does not constitute a free society. Erdogan evidently does not care about quaint notions like freedom of speech and the like.

The worst part of this is the leaders of supposedly free nations who accommodate him despite his obviously autocratic tendencies. Germany did not have to prosecute the comedian who supposedly insulted Erdogan on their soil, but Merkel did it to appease this strongman. There are other geopolitical factors at play, obviously- but simply kowtowing gives him more courage to keep jailing others, case in point this former Miss Turkey.

Comments