A Turkish prosecutor on Friday asked for up to four years in prison for four contributors to the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo for having “insulted” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a cartoon in 2020, according to the state news agency Anadolu.
The four collaborators of the French magazine accused are the cartoonist Alice Petit and three people in charge of the famous magazine, Gérard Biard, Julien Sérignac and Laurent Sourisseau, known as Riss, according to the agency.
The drawing portrays the authoritarian Turkish president in his boxer shorts, beer in hand, lifting the skirt of a veiled woman, exclaiming: “Ohhh, the prophet!”
The publication of this cartoon, in October, unleashed the ire of Erdogan in a context of strong diplomatic tensions between Ankara and Paris.
The indictment, which must be formally accepted by a court in order for a process to be opened, considers that said drawing “does not in any way fall within the framework of freedom of expression or of the press”, but is “vulgar , obscene and dishonorable “.
Erdogan called the cartoon an “ignoble attack” by “vultures.”
This matter came in a context of diplomatic crisis between Turkey and France.
The Turkish president has even accused his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron of “Islamophobia” for having defended the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad.
Macron warned last Tuesday against “attempts at interference” by Turkey in the 2022 French presidential elections and accused Ankara of spreading lies through state-controlled media.
Erdogan had previously said that his French counterpart needed “mental tests” following a controversy over a new French law that cracks down on radical Islamism.
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