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A TURKISH COURT has found a former Miss Turkey beauty queen guilty of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on social media, handing her a suspended sentence of over one year in jail.
The Istanbul court sentenced model Merve Buyuksarac, 27, to one year and two months in prison for “publicly insulting” Erdogan in a satirical poem she posted on her Instagram account, the Dogan news agency reported.
The punishment has been suspended, it added, without giving further details.
The “Master’s Poem” – which was shared by the model while Erdogan was serving as prime minister – criticises the Turkish strongman with verses adapted from the national anthem.
Erdogan, who was elected president in August 2014 after serving as prime minister for more than a decade, is often called “Buyuk Usta” (the Big Master).
Hatice Ozay, Erdogan’s lawyer, told the court that the model’s posts on social media cannot be considered criticism but rather was an “attack against my client’s personal rights.”
Buyuksarac won the Miss Turkey competition in 2006 and has since worked as a model as well as appearing on reality TV shows.
After being briefly detained in January 2015, she admitted to sharing the poem which had been printed in a Turkish satirical magazine but said she did not want to insult the president.
A string of journalists as well as ordinary citizens end up in court for insulting or slandering Erdogan, who is accused by critics of being increasingly authoritarian.
The number of cases has swelled after Erdogan moved to the presidency in 2014 because in the past his predecessors rarely used the practice.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in March that almost 2,000 people in Turkey have been prosecuted for insulting Erdogan since he became president.
Ironically, Erdogan was himself sent to jail in 1999 for reciting, while mayor of Istanbul, a nationalist and Islamist-tinged poem that the authorities of the time deemed was guilty of “inciting religious hatred”.
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Turkey often proclaims to be more European and liberal than people give them credit for but the fact is that they’re still light years behind and still as corrupt as they’ve ever been.
Eu doesn’t want to get into bed with Turkey but they have no choice
Turkey would destroy the EU. The Greeks are only in the hapenny place compared to them.
She can insult me anytime she likes….!
Josephine. There is always a choice.
Not in this case
Quick someone tell him about sticks and stones! Normally I would laugh at such a fool but he has so much power it makes him dangerous.
It’s the other way around Groucho. The E.U. destroyed Greece as a political lesson to other nations thinking of electing a government which might protect the welfare of its people rather than the interests of big capital.
Erdogan alone is enough reason to not allow Turkey in.
Ah wally the constant socialist apologist, yes cus Greece never fudged their books to gain membership to the EU in the first place or had a black economy taking 25- 30% of their income out of the public coffers, but they shouldn’t have to change their ways cus that’s how they’ve always done it? Hmm I wonder how they ended up in such dire circumstances in the first place? I know let me guess was it someone elses fault?
Comrade Wally, they’re out of tinfoil at your local. Won’t be long. Just nipping down to Dunnes for you.
Wally I think you need to take a look at Greek history to see they have a very long habit of destroying themselves, and not paying their debt’s, all long before the E.U was established.
Ian, The Greek books were cooked under right wing capitalist governments. The Greek people were led into the monetary trap of the Euro by their establishment political class, as were we in Ireland.
John, There was wholesale tax dodging in Greece from the Metaxas dictatorship in the 70s right up to the present. The primary beneficiaries are the capitalist oligarchy in shipping, media etc and not the ordinary working class. Greek tax compliance was no better before they joined the Euro but their problem now is that their debt is denominated in a foreign currency and cannot be simply keystroked away as debts denominated in a sovereign floating currency could be.
So wally your saying those governments magically got voted into power and that nobody voted for them?
Ian, FF were voted into power but we didn’t vote to have a mountain of banker debt loaded on to our backs. Our democracy is largely an illusion. Big capital has always controlled “democracy”. The prefeered strategy is to control the information rather than direct control of the working class through brute force oppression which in comparison consumes a lot of state’s resources.
@Tellingit, We have the SJWs and the Far right both wanting anyone critical of them to be silenced, just look at Anita Sarkisian et al and there presentation to the UN. So maybe Turky is just a little ahead of us, because thats the way the right and the left want it to go.
Its always someone elses fault……..
Ian,
Are you claiming responsibility for the collapse of the 6 Irish banks?
Wally, Ian did not vote in the bank directors that presided over the collapse of the banks. He is not responsible. These are private companies albeit private companies that have the ability to collapse a State and which should be heavily supervised (a lesson we failed to learn). But in a representative democracy the electorate must ultimately carry the can and the consequences for the actions of those whom they elect. I feel great sympathy for the Greeks but they are the architects of their own misfortune and electing a new Government does not allow the electorate to escape these consequences as we in Ireland know to our bitter cost That said I think the Greeks need debt relief and the sooner this is accepted the better. We cannot keep flogging them until their morale improves as it were. But they also have to address their own failings which they have not done to-date. They are a State that is rotten from the top to the bottom with public jobs handed out for political advantage by Government after Government on a scale un-imagined elsewhere in the EU. Corruption is a way of life. Even with debt relief, unless they change these things they will remain mired in the mud. And they can’t even devalue their currency to escape the consequences of their own foolishness!
This is the country that the EU wants to join?
Whereas pushing Turkey away and potentially into the arms of IS is a much better plan? Pre-condition for EU membership (which isn’t going to be any time soon) would be that all this medieval bull stops. Wouldn’t that be a good thing for everyone?
I hear ya but it’s not a good enough reason IMHO.
Where do you get your facts Tordelback????? No such conditions have been outlined for Turkey.
The Copenhagen Criteria, Dave. Not exactly news.
Erdogen presides over 80 million people. He recently stated publicly that women can not be considered equal to men. He is also encouraging women to have at least 4 children and warned Muslims against birth control. Slowly he is eroding women’s rights and freedom yet at the same time demanding membership of the EU. It is imperative that this does not occur.
Will he be issuing European arrest warrants for people of other countries who take the pee out of him?
Many a true word spoken in jest. BTW watch what you say on your facebook page as “Facebook Signs European Union Pledge To Suppress Loosely Defined ‘Hate Speech’ And Promote ‘Counter Narratives’”
Here’s that poem he read out in the late 1990s.
Nobody should be surprised at the way he’s acting.
This man wants to spread Islam the way his forebears did more than a thousand years ago.
Thanks, Merkel.
“Our minarets are our bayonets, Our domes are our helmets, Our mosques are our barracks. We will put a final end to ethnic segregation. No one can ever intimidate us.
“If the skies and the ground were to open against us. If floods and volcanoes were to burst, We will not turn from our mission. My reference is Islam. If I am not able to speak of this, What is the use of living?”
And as he was led away to prison tens of thousands of his supporters cheered him on.
Visa-free travel?
EU membership?
Sick joke.
Can we not just let Turkish women join the EU?
Erdogan fancies himself the restored Padishah and Halife… very funny really watching the Grand Turk celebrate the conquest of Constantinople and the Empire which fell apart under the weight of overweening autocrats and gross corruption.
No version of Giftgrub in Turkey then.
How many of us would be in jail for insulting Enda Kenny? and……Turkey wants to join the EU as a full member ???? perhaps when and if they ever come out of the dark ages
It seems the MSM Inc the Journal have stopped reporting on the countless incidents from Germany, such as this one.. http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.2821/german-member-of-refugees-welcome-raped-by-afghan-tenant.html
MSM CONSPIRACIES EVERYWHERE!
Wtf has that got to do with this article?
Rowe it is time for you to see a doctor and tell him/her about the nightmares regarding refugees.
prousse, I see you’re trying to make a light situation out of rape, bit sick of you.. But then again it’s what can be expected from an Islamofascist such as yourself.
Rowe, as usual, you are twisting things around because you are incapable of thinking at all… Get a psychiatrist.
Erdogan needs to be removed from the position of power he gave himself and jump off a cliff
IT is not just the oppressive regime of Erdogan which makes Turkey wholly unsuitable as a member of the EU, it is the cultural, social, religious and political views and values of the majority of the Turkish people which render them incompatible with the Western values of the existing Member States. The admission of Turkey would be the step too far.
Thankfully, and despite some positive noises, not a single Member State in the European Untion actually favours Turkey’s entrance, not even Germany. Commission officials are acutely aware that that the EU would collapse of Turkey were to be admitted.
The situation in Turkey is far worse than we understand. The legal and judicial system are no longer in any way independent. The security services threaten and bully human rights lawyers, opposition politicians are under constant surveillance, more extreme sects of Muslims are gaining more and more control and some neighbours are ratting out fellow neighbours to the security services. Women are being relegated to inferior roles. Extreme Muslim values prevail. Liberal secular views are increasingly intolerable. Sharia type laws and observance are more prevalent.,
She’s a lot luckier than the kid who got jailed for similar.
Thursday,June 2 2016, Your time is 2:26:08 AM/Hurryet Daily-Turkey’s Eng. Lang.Daily Newspaper.
—”Youngster sentenced to 11 months in prison for ‘insulting Erdoğan’—-”A high school student has been sentenced to 11 months in prison for allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Central Anatolian province of Konya.—”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/youngster-sentenced-to-11-months-in-prison-for-insulting-erdogan.aspx?pageID=238&nID=88374&NewsCatID=341
Wow the extremes-and then there’s Trump blowing every which way ;-$
Sticks and stones….. she should come to Ireland, our little man can take it!
Erdogan is a donkey. #jesuismerve
Turkey buys it’s fighter jets and weapons from the Americans so America wants Turkey to become part of the EU. The Saudis are more brutal than ISIS but because they buy their hardware from the US it’s ok to behead and torture people. Germany does what ever America tells it to do and this is why Germany is now dragging Europe into a proxy way with Russia. America wants Ukraine!
Ukraine wants Ukraine, including the bits Russia has snipped off
What bits has Russia snipped off? Oh, you mean the bits gifted to Ukraine in the 1950s by a Ukrainian Soviet leader (and world-class moron) that voted to secede from Ukraine and later voted to join Russia? Would those be the bits you are referring to?
We don’t insult our politicians ,we state fact’s
He has also called contraception “treason”. Turkey is turning into an Islamic state. In the past the Turkish military would have stepped in to stop this as in the 1990s but the EU forced Turkey to put the military under civilian control – with unintended consequences when Erdogan became President after Gul stepped down.
For Nation of pigs…it sure is funny they don’t eat them.
She wouldn’t insult ours for fear of the little people.
Ours is one of the little people!
You wouldn’t say that if you were in Turkey Tom. Even if it’s …
Well if they don’t want her I’ll gladly take her in…
‘Buyuksarac won the Miss Turkey competition in 2006 and has since worked as a model as well as appearing on reality TV shows.’
WOW!
She sounds like a real heavyweight intellectual.
‘Don’t insult the Master – or you’ll end up in plaster
But I’m a Queen – and I won’t be unseen’
Something like that.
@EmmaQ@gmail.com…………..Best comment of the day Emma………..
I live in Turkey because of it is a great country and you are treated with respect. The reason I am here is due to the fact that they are not in the EU and hopefully it never will be. No bullying from faceless people making rules from desks hundreds of miles away. The EU and their mad pals created the mess in Syria and now they want Turkey to clean it up. They are lucky that Turkey even cares about the Syrians. The EU doesn’t. The EU should clean up the EU or more countries like Britain will take the high road out .
What are you smoking Keenan… the “faceless” people who make the rules are the ministers of the member states and the MEPs elected by the people of Europe. The EU had almost nothing to do with the mess in Syria – that is mostly down to the Sunnite free radicals underestimating the Shi’ite autocrat’s determination to hold power and the willingness of the Russians to help him.
Trump wants to be the Erdogan.of the US.
Oh shut up
Is there any way we could blame this on Denis O’Brien? I’m waiting Wally. Well chosen name, by the way.
I don’t know why people are getting upset with the EU. As it st as stands Turkey has as much chance of joining the EU as China. Every single EU state has a veto concerning new members and several EU countries have publicly said they would veto any application by Turkey. So calm down, untwist your knickers and chill.
At least she didn’t call him a little midget parasite!
And some eurocrats want them in the EU……forget it
Wow what a joke of a country…qaa there once and never ever again!
Xmas Turkey. Gobble Gobble. :-)
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