A well-known TV journalist has been arrested by the police in Turkey after accusations that she insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a broadcast.
–
Sedef Kabas was arrested at her home on Saturday night, just hours after she made the comments and then published them on Twitter to her nearly 900,000 followers, according to her lawyer.
Insulting the president can be punished by imprisonment for a minimum of one and a maximum of four years.
“A so-called journalist is clearly insulting our president on a TV channel that has no other goal than to spread hatred,” Erdogan’s spokeswoman Fahrettin Altun wrote on Twitter.
– I strongly condemn this arrogance, this immorality. This is not only immoral, it is also irresponsible, Altun writes.
The Turkish Journalists’ Union condemns the arrest, calling it a “serious attack on freedom of expression”.
Human rights groups have repeatedly accused Turkey of undermining press freedom by arresting journalists and shutting down government-critical media, especially since Erdogan managed to avert the coup attempt in July 2016.
Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 153 out of 180 in its 2021 press freedom index.
–
–
