Turkish Journalist Jailed, To Go On Trial, for Publicly Insulting President Erdogan

A Turkish journalist has been jailed and will go on trial for insulting Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to reports citing CNN Turk. The well-known journalist Sedef Kabas was arrested early on Saturday morning and a judge at the main courthouse in Istanbul ruled in favor of a formal arrest. Kabas cited a proverb both on Twitter and in an interview on an opposition television channel meant to insult the president. In a court statement on Saturday Kabas denied intending to insult the president. “There is a very famous proverb that says that a crowned head becomes wiser. But we see it is not true,” she said in the interview, and later tweeted. “A bull does not become king just by entering the palace, but the palace becomes a barn.” The law in Turkey on insulting the president carries a jail sentence of a minimum of one year and up to four years. Thousands of Turks have been charged and sentenced for insulting Erdogan in his seven years as president. Merdan Yanardag, chief editor of Tele 1 channel, where Kabas made the comment, said the arrest “is an attempt to intimidate journalists, the media and society.” This is not Kabas’ first brush with the law. In 2015 she was tried and acquitted for articles and social media posts she wrote about a 2013 corruption and bribery case and she was tried in 2019 for insulting the president and given a suspended sentence.