{"id":1937,"date":"2016-03-03T13:19:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T13:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1937"},"modified":"2016-03-03T13:19:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T13:19:58","slug":"turkey-thousands-of-cases-against-people-accused-of-insulting-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1937","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: Thousands of cases against people accused of insulting Erdogan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By NEOnline\/GK
\nBy ASSOCIATED PRESS
\nneurope.eu<\/em><\/p>\n

As many as 1,845 cases have been opened against people who are accused of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to office in 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turkish Justice Ministry allowed 1,845 cases on charges of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to go ahead since 2014.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bozdag: I am unable to read the insults leveled at our president. I start to blush.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Associated Press (AP) reported that Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag announced the figure in the Turkish parliament responding to questions by opposition MPs. Bozdag, defended the prosecutions, saying: \u201cI am unable to read the insults leveled at our president. I start to blush.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Turkish law, filing a legal case on charges of \u201cdefaming the Turkish president\u201d must be done upon approval from the Justice Ministry.<\/p>\n

In October 2015, the Ministry approved the arrest of two boys<\/a>, aged 12 and 13, for tearing down posters showing Erdogan. Moreover, in December 2015, a lawsuit has been opened<\/a> against the editor-in-chief of Turkey\u2019s leading secular Hurriyet newspaper, Sedat Ergin, with a demand that the journalist serve five years in prison for \u201cinsulting president.\u201d Also in December, a Turkish medical doctor, Bilgin Ciftci, was on trial for sharing an image of Erdogan comparing him with the well-known Gollum<\/a>, from the movie Lord of the Rings.<\/p>\n

In January 2016, the Freedom in the World 2016 report<\/a> \u201cdowngraded\u201d Turkey\u2019s human rights profile reporting that the country should be considered as \u201cpartly free.\u201d Moreover, the Committee to Protect Journalists, reported that with 14 journalists imprisoned as of the end of 2015, Turkey<\/a> remains among the worst jailers of journalists<\/a> worldwide.<\/p>\n

According to AP, Erdogan has been accused of aggressively using the \u201cdefaming the Turkish president\u201d law to silent any kind of opposition. Before Erdogan, the law was used only in extreme cases.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Erdogan, also filed a complaint against the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper\u2019s editor-in-chief Can Dundar and the paper\u2019s Ankara representative Erdem Gul for their reports on alleged arms smuggling to Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The two, however, were released from prison last week pending the outcome of the trial after Turkey\u2019s Constitutional Court ruled that their rights had been violated. Erdogan severely criticized the court\u2019s ruling, saying he did not respect it and would not abide by it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By NEOnline\/GK By ASSOCIATED PRESS neurope.eu As many as 1,845 cases have been opened against people who are accused of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1939,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions\/1939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}