An alarming number of Turks from students to celebrities are facing criminal charges over draconian laws prohibiting insult or disrespect to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, fueling criticism that the rules are aimed at stifling dissent.
Erdogan’s opponents accuse him of increasing megalomania and the authorities of setting up a cult of personality around the man who has ruled Turkey either as president or prime minister since 2003.
A 16-year-old student was due to go on trial today in the central Anatolian city of Konya in a case seen as the latest sign of a lurch to authoritarianism.
The teenager, Mehmet Emin Altunses, was arrested in December last year in the middle of lessons at school and taken for interrogation by police for calling Erdogan the “chief of theft” during a student protest. A court later ordered his release, but he risks up to four years in prison if convicted.
A sharp increase in the number of lawsuits has tarnished the EU hopeful country’s image — already tainted with several journalists languishing behind bars and its blanket bans on social media.
Lawyer Benan Molu of the Istanbul Bar Association said that since Erdogan’s election as president in August last year, at least 84 people have been charged with insulting him, or for speaking their mind in public or on social media.
“I’ve been a human rights activist for more than 20 years now, but I cannot remember a worse period for freedom of expression in Turkey,” said Sebla Arcan, the Istanbul head of Turkey’s Human Rights Association.
Erdogan has enjoyed overwhelming electoral support since he came to power in 2003, but his reputation as a grassroots leader has eroded in recent years largely over his authoritarian style and zero-tolerance of criticism.
Last month, the main opposition Republican People’s Party or CHP sought amendments to Article 299 of the penal code which criminalizes any insults to the president, saying it did “not bode well with democracy and rule of law.”
Activists have called for an end to rights abuses under the contentious article, which they say was rarely used before Erdogan moved to the presidency.
“This article is used as a weapon to silence the opposition in violation of free speech and it must be scrapped immediately,” Arcan said.
Erdogan, who was himself imprisoned for four months in the late 1990s for reciting a Muslim poem that was deemed an incitement to religious hatred, sued journalists and cartoonists for allegedly slandering him when he was prime minister.
CHP lawmaker Aykan Erdemir said authoritarian political culture represented a “serious impediment to freedoms” in Turkey.
“It is Turkey’s shame that police guard thoughts and opinions, while ignoring labor crimes or women’s murders,” he told reporters.
The dozens of lawsuits have handed Turkish satirical weekly magazine Penguen ammunition.
In its latest issue this week, it published a cartoon in which a policeman questions a meowing cat whether it is insulting the president. The cat answers: “No man, I am a cat. It’s beyond my understanding.”
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