AhlulBayt News Agency - A former Miss Turkey has been convicted of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a social media post.
Merve Buyuksarac was handed a 14-month suspended sentence meaning she will be sent to jail if she does anything in the period deemed to qualify as “reoffending”.
The 27-year-old model, who won the Miss Turkey contest in 2006, was briefly detained for sharing a satirical poem on her Instagram account in 2014.
Called 'The Master’s Poem’, it reportedly criticised Mr Erdogan and adapts the country’s national anthem in its verses.
“I shared it because I found it funny. I had no intention to insult President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” Ms Buyuksarac was quoted as saying at the time.
Prosecutors deemed it to be insulting to Mr Erdogan, who has filed close to 2,000 defamation cases since becoming president in 2014, using a previously little-used law that bars insulting him.
The poem, which was also posted by thousands of other people, was a satirical version of Turkey’s national anthem which did not refer to Erdogan by name.
According to Turkish law, insulting the president is punishable by up to four years jail time. But only after Erdogan became president in 2014 has it been regularly enforced with over 1,800 defamation cases being registered since then.
Last month, Turkey sparked controversy after filing a criminal complaint against German comedian Jan Boehmermann who read out a sexually crude poem about Erdogan.
German television aired Boehmermann's satirical poem that poked fun at Erdogan. But following the backlash from Ankara, in a widely criticized move, German Chancellor Angela Merkel permitted court action to be carried out against the comedian who was since placed under police protection.
ZDF has apologized for the poem and removed it from the internet, saying the poem "had crossed the line into slander."
Foreign leaders and international observers have raised concern over deteriorating freedoms in the country, where critical voices in the media and politics have been targeted by a wave of new laws and arrests cracking down on dissent.
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