The Turkish TV presenter wrote a tweet with a proverb about a bull that cannot become a king. She was arrested for insulting the president

The Istanbul court has left the journalist Sedef Kabash to the court in the case of insulting the President of Turkey. She was detained on the night of January 22 and during the day she was taken from a police station to court. Prior to this, Kabash posted a tweet in her account, which said: “If the bull enters the palace, he will not become the king. But the palace will turn into a stable. Circassian proverb. "

The Kabash repeated the same proverb and on the air of Tele 1 TV channel - which the next day was the first to show the shots on which the journalist under the escort and handcuffs are led to court. The editor -in -chief of the television channel, Medan Yanardag, sharply condemned her arrest, saying that it was unacceptable to detain the journalist at two in the morning for the proverb, and called the occurrence of pressure on the media and society.

Sedef Kabash threatens the punishment under the 299th article of the Criminal Code of Turkey, which prohibits the insult of the President of Turkey. Its violation is fraught with a prison period of year to four, and for an insult to publicly, this period increases by one six. In the current form, an article in the Criminal Code of Turkey has existed since 2005, but until 2014, when the President became Recep Tyip Erdogan, was almost not used.

Since 2014, the criminal case for insulting the president has gone for tens of thousands: by August 2021, more than 38 thousand had been gained , about half of them ended in prison terms. Among the accused in the case of insulting the president there are many journalists, opposition politicians, caricaturists and other famous personalities, but there are minors . And in 2021, the Turkish police detained a group of feminists, who, on the march in honor of the International Women's Day on March 8, performed the screamer "Who does not jump, that is Tayyip."

Alexey Kovalev