[ad_1]
Sedef Kabash is charged under Article 299 of the Turkish Criminal Code. She faces imprisonment for a term of one to four years. However, this penalty may be increased by one-sixth since the insult was inflicted in public.
Since 2018, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed the constitution, “zeroed out” the deadlines and, under the guise of an “anti-terrorist law”, essentially made the state of emergency permanent, which allows seriously restricting freedom of assembly and detaining citizens for several days without charge, there have been dozens of journalists and human rights activists were detained.
Almost 200 media outlets were closed, and Turkey then took first place in the world in terms of the number of journalists in prison.
“We have always had problems with freedom of the press, but under Erdogan it got even worse: in 30 years of journalistic experience, I can only compare the current situation with the period after the 1980 coup. But even then opposition newspapers continued to exist. And now the government has passed a law aimed at restricting freedom of speech on digital platforms too. In my country, there are all kinds of censorship tools. Closing media outlets, banning broadcasts for several days, blocking websites, restricting the movement of journalists, punishing journalists in every possible way. The government also threatened media owners, so now there are only 2-3 opposition TV channels left,” Turkish journalist Banu Güven told The Insider.
In addition, the number of criminal cases for insulting the president has exceeded tens of thousands: by August 2021, such cases accumulated more than 38, most of them ended in prison terms.
[ad_2]
Source link
