“An ox goes into the palace”
Journalist arrested for mocking Erdogan
01/22/2022, 10:19 p.m
The Turkish authorities take the mocking comment of a journalist on Twitter amiss: she is arrested and imprisoned for insulting President Erdogan. Before that, she attacked the government for how it deals with critics.
A journalist has been arrested in Turkey for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Sedef Kabas was taken to a prison in Istanbul, her lawyer Ugur Poyras said. Accordingly, a court had ordered her arrest for “insulting the President”. Poyras said he would appeal against the “unlawful” decision. “We hope that Turkey can soon return to the rule of law,” said the lawyer.
Kabas was arrested at a hotel in Istanbul on Saturday morning and taken to court after the Attorney General opened an investigation into her for allegedly insulting the President. Insulting the President is a criminal offense in Turkey carrying a prison sentence of up to four years and eight months.
support on social media
In a TV show on Tele 1 on Friday, the journalist criticized the government for cracking down on critics and for polarizing society. “When an ox goes into a palace, it doesn’t become a king, the palace becomes a stable,” Kabas later quoted a saying on Twitter, without naming a person or place. Members of the cabinet and Erdogan spokesman Fahrettin Altun described her as “immoral” and “irresponsible”. The Turkish media regulator RTUK, meanwhile, launched a separate investigation against the broadcaster Tele 1 because of “unacceptable statements against our president,” as its chairman, Ebubekir Sahin, announced on Twitter late Friday evening.
Meanwhile, users on social media showed their support for Kabas. The 52-year-old journalist was briefly detained in 2014 for a message on social media. At the time, she had criticized the public prosecutor’s office for dropping a corruption investigation in which Erdogan was also involved.