http://theduran.com/miss-turkey-gets-14-months-prison-publicly-insulting-turkeys-erdogan/
Miss Turkey 2006 has been found guilty for sharing a poem that insulted Turkish President Erdogan.

Erdogan's dictatorship continues to crack down on potential threats to the Turkish state. This time, the dangerous Miss Turkey 2006 (27-year-old Merve Buyuksarac) has been found guilty for sharing a poem that insulted Sultan Erdogan.

The Istanbul court gave Miss Turkey a suspended sentence of 14 months for "publicly insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on condition that she does not insult the Sultan again within the next five years.

Merve Buyuksarac is the latest of over 2,000 defamation cases President Erdogan has filed in two years.

The Turkish law bans insulting the president...something that is quite unbecoming of a NATO member, and EU partner.



RT reports further...

The case was based on a satirical verse she reposted on her Instagram account in 2014.

The so-called 'Master's Poem, ' an adaptation of the Turkish national anthem, allegedly criticizes Erdogan, who served as prime minister for more than a decade prior to becoming president and has often been called "Buyuk Usta" [the Big Master]. The poem did not mention Erdogan by name, but made reference to a corruption scandal that allegedly involved his family.

During the hearings, the President's lawyer, Hatice Ozay, stressed that Buyuksarac's Instagram post had gone beyond "the limits of criticism" and was in fact "an attack" on Erdogan's personal rights.

Buyuksarac was briefly arrested at the time the post was made, but then freed as she denied insulting Erdogan. The case however resurfaced, with Tuesday's court's decision based on a previously rarely-used Turkish law that forbids insulting the head of state.

The law has been used increasingly often lately to silence those critical of Erdogan's policies. Since becoming president in 2014, he has filed up to 2,000 cases under this law in trials targeting journalists, foreign and domestic, academics, politicians, comedians, and now - models.

This spring has in fact been rich with cases of Ankara's witch-hunt on those critical of the current government.

Also on Tuesday, Cengiz Candar, a former columnist for Radikal and Hurriyet newspapers who's been in the profession for over 40 years, appeared in Istanbul court accused of insulting Erdogan in a series of articles he wrote in the summer of 2015, criticizing Turkey's renewed conflict against Kurdish rebels. The veteran journalist and an adviser to the late Turkish head of state Turgut Ozal faces up to four years in prison if found guilty.

"These court cases must come to an end," he told reporters outside the courthouse. "These trials must immediately end with acquittals so that the presidency of the Turkish Republic can preserve its respectability."

In April, Erdogan sparked a row when he submitted a personal complaint for libel against German comedian Jan Böhmermann for a crude poem with rough sexual references about the Turkish president the comedian read on air. He is now prosecuted by German authorities.

In March, the Turkish government shut down and reformed opposition newspaper Zaman, previously a strong critic of the President. Overnight the newspaper turned into a government mouthpiece.

Four Turkish academics faced trial after having been charged with spreading "terrorist propaganda." Their alleged crime was to denounce the renewed conflict with Turkey's Kurds, being part of a group of more than 1,000 scholars who signed a declaration in January that was critical of the Turkish government's military intervention into the predominantly Kurdish southeast of the country.

Foreign journalists have also been targeted and arrested. The latest incidents involved German TV journalist Volker Schwenck and Dutch journalist Ebru Umar. Schwenck was going to the Turkish-Syrian border to report on refugees, but instead was denied entry into Turkey and spent six hours in detention at Istanbul airport. Umar was briefly detained in Turkey over Twitter posts critical of the Turkish President.

Turkey also shut down Russian news agency Sputnik's website in the country and blacklisted its Istanbul bureau chief, refusing him entry to the country and seizing his residence permit and press credentials.

"Erdogan's administration doesn't seem to tolerate any criticism at all. Any journalist, would they criticize Erdogan, risk being imprisoned and legally harassed. In short, journalism is in coma in Turkey," Dr. Y. Alp Aslandogan, President of the Alliance for Shared Values and a Board Member of the Gulen Institute told RT, adding that he overall situation with respect to fundamental freedoms in Turkey will only get worse unless the Turkish people interfere.

"The fate of the country is up to the people of Turkey. Unless there is an outcry from Turkish people I don't know how this situation can be resolved. I'm just hoping that Turkish people will awaken to what's going on."

well,first he decapitated the Military that safeguarded a Secular State,then he went on to install more and more Stuff with his Edicts!
Sound familiar?

Why do they hate women so much? They cover them up and beat them...big bad supposed men scared of women

Selfesteem of a Gnat!

odd, more top brass of the US military has been replaced/fired under obarry than any other president, ever...

IMO opinion, it is not only everything he has done & is doing. But, WHY, Merkel & Obama & the outside world is putting up with it? And even giving in to his power hungry whims?

Now that...is scary & a very familiar pattern.

It took the States FOUR years to get into WW-2

NWO agenda... a "borderless" planet, with a world police force...Hitler tried it and we stopped him, now we are aggressors...

Merkel to miss vote as Turkey pressures Germany not to recognize Armenian genocide

http://www.rt.com/news/345107-genocide-armenia-turkey-merkel/

‘Erdoganistan’: Persecuted journalists tell RT of horrors of Turkish crackdown on Kurds

http://www.rt.com/news/345106-erdogan-documentary-turkey-kurds/

Love him or hate him, Turkish President Recep Erdogan makes for great television. If you thought the world of politics was boring, I suggest you plug in to his latest rant.

Before beginning my analysis, I'd like to thank Mr. Erdogan for the profound lessons he and his entourage ever so generously imparted to the world. How lucky we are to stand in the shadow of a man whose expertise encompasses all subject matters and all issues.

If I didn't know better, I would dare venture that Turkey's president suffers from a Messiah complex - thankfully such impure thoughts would never enter my subterranean brain - I am only a woman after all, and women cannot possibly hope to equal men - let alone understand them.

And so I would ask of you my fellow readers to please bask with me in the glorious wisdom Mr. Erdogan - the great Sultan of all Turkey - decided to share with us, common mortals.

President Recep Erdogan had a busy week. In the span of a few days our gallant head of state managed to anger women, make a parody of Islam, and threaten a few nations with dire reprisals should they defy his will. Who said it was easy being dictator? I must admit that when it comes to dedication to a job well done - totalitarianism - Erdogan is putting in the extra hours.

It all began with my personal favorite: "We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach," said the Turkish president before ranting on: "Nobody can interfere in God's work. The first duty here belongs to mothers."

May I assume that like me your jaw hit the floor. Did Erdogan just appoint himself as God's personal spokesperson, demanding that the whole of Turkey reproduce? It appears he just gave a whole new meaning to the term 'Godspeed'.

Seriously though, beyond the immediate comic effect of such a tirade, we ought to recognize the dangerous seed of ultra-nationalism, knee-deep in self-righteousness. By themselves, Erdogan's comments could be shrugged off as the ranting of a man whose views on women, society and religion are an anachronism onto themselves. But if you are to frame this narrative within Erdogan's ethnocentric rhetoric against the Kurds, you find yourself looking at a potentially covert call for something much more sinister.

Hear me out. Erdogan delivers his "go forth and multiply" speech on the wake of another - one which demonized the Kurds as "Atheists and Zoroastrians."

In an attempt to appeal to religious sentiment and rouse Islamist fervor, Erdogan claimed that Kurdish militants had burnt down schools and mosques stating, "They are atheists, they are Zoroastrians. Nothing will come of them. They have not and are not acting with our values."

And then this gem: "The terror organization's [PKK] real issue isn't with the state. It is with the belief, holy book, prayer, history and culture of the region's people. Those supporting the organization are more concerned with uprooting the people and tearing them away from their values than a military victory. The number of militants killed within the organization and the innocent people killed by them is higher than those killed during operations by the state. Those who always talk of the past extrajudicial murders by the state cannot be sincere if they don't take a stand against this. We have never shied away from facing up to mistakes, deficiencies and the truth."

Now put together ultra-nationalism and calls for a religious crusade and you have yourself another Armenia.

Could it be that Erdogan needs new arms to fight in his army? Could it be that this ambitious autocrat seeks to resurrect the great Ottoman Empire on the belly of Turkish women? While we may laugh before the absurdity of his comments, we should fear what they imply.

"The first duty of a woman is to increase the country's population," said Erdogan.

Ok, so let me summarize here: Women are not equal to men, should they ever claim to be men's equal they would damage the latter's psyche so badly that it would drive them to suicide...

Unfortunately, that does not cover it all. Who could have forgotten how the long lost harems of the Ottoman Empire taught females how to behave like dutiful women. I clearly missed that lesson!

"The harem was a school for members of the Ottoman dynasty and an educational establishment for preparing women for life," Emine Erdogan, Turkey's first lady, told reporters in March this year.

And then the proverbial cherry on the cake: birth control amounts to treason. Not my word, but his.

Chauvinism - checked.

Backwardism - checked.

Idiotism - checked.

Thanks to Mr Erdogan and Co. I'm able to invent new words. See, what did I tell you, a gift to mankind, that's what the man is!

I grant you the section about gender equality and suicide actually came from Turkey's Prime Minister's mouth Ahmet Davutoglu back in December 2014 when he warned: "Women being equal to men causes suicides" You will admit though, it falls within the same rationale.

One would think that after such an intense few days the Turkish President would retire behind the golden walls of his grand palace. Nope... not that president!

Erdogan had a few more fishes to fry before supper and still found time in his pre-Ramadan schedule to threaten both the United States over its support of the Kurds, and then Germany over its desire to recognize the Armenian genocide.

"If Germany is to be deceived by this, then bilateral diplomatic, economic, trade, political, and military ties - we are both NATO countries - will be damaged," Erdogan told reporters.

And the infamous: "PKK, PYD, Daesh (ISIL), YPG, they are no different from each other. They are all terrorist organizations. I condemn the USA's support for the PYD and YPG. This isn't what they promised us. I believe in honest politics. Our friends, those who are with us in NATO should not, cannot send their soldiers to Syria with the YPG insignia."

Let's hope that June will be quieter ...

Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen.