Former Miss Turkey Sentenced to Jail for Insulting Her President on Instagram

Former Miss Turkey Sentenced to Jail for Insulting Her President on Instagram

Former Miss Turkey, Merve Buyuksarac, has been sentenced to 14-months jail time for insulting President Tayyip Erdogan through a poem she shared on Instagram. 

According to Huffington Post, the 27-year-old Buyuksarac was found guilty today by an Istanbul court and handed the sentence, but it was suspended on condition that she will not repeat same in the next five years.

Not long after Buyuksarac posted a satirical poem in January 2015, she was arrested and detained and an Istanbul prosecutor called for her prosecution for insulting a public official.

Turkey remains one of the countries which had restricted social media interactions, a path Nigeria almost towed after a bill on the floor of the upper chamber of the National Assembly passed its second reading in December. Dubbed the #SocialMediaBill, it sought to regulate citizens’ activities on the internet, but it met its death in May of this year after much controversy.

In Turkey, insulting a public official is punishable by up to four years in prison. But it was not applied until Erdogan won the elections, and now has about 800 cases of people who shaded him. Huff Post adds that many of these people include teenagers and even cartoonists.