In Turkey, prominent journalist Sedef Kabaş has been jailed while she awaits trial on charges of allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Kabaş was detained Saturday after she tweeted a proverb that translates as: “When the ox climbs to the palace, he does not become a king, but the palace becomes a barn.”
Kabaş appears frequently on political talk shows at Turkey’s remaining opposition television stations and is well-known as a former television host. She currently runs Sedef Kabaş TV, a YouTube channel, with 87,000 followers, in which she discusses politics with her guests. Kabaş also has over 899,000 followers on Twitter.
Kabaş was arrested on January 22nd for “insulting the president” because of her words during a live broadcast a week ago.
“There is a famous saying, ‘A crowned head will get wiser.’ But we see that this isn’t the reality. There is also a saying that is the exact opposite: ‘When the cattle climbs to the palace, he doe not become a king, but the palace becomes a barn’,” Kabaş said during a program on TELE1 TV on January 14.
A week later, she posted the second quote on her Twitter and Instagram accounts as a “Circassian proverb,” replacing the word “cattle” with “ox.”
Shortly after, at around 2 a.m. on Saturday, she was detained during a police raid. Hours later, a penal judgeship of peace remanded her in custody.
The detention came after several senior government officials, including Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu, Presidential Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Spokesperson targeted Kabaş on social media because of her words.
Kabaş is being held at a prison in Istanbul since 12 days. (as of February 3)
Twenty-seven human rights and journalism groups have released a joint statement demanding for the immediate release.
The following groups signed the statement: International Press Institute (IPI), Association of European Journalists (AEJ), Articolo 21, Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI), Gazetecileri Koruma Komitesi Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Danish PEN, English PEN, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Freedom House, German PEN, Index on Censorship, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT), PEN America, PEN Centre of Bosnia-Herzegovina, PEN International, PEN Iraq, PEN Melbourne, PEN Norway, PEN Turkey, PEN Québec, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), San Miguel PEN, South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), Swedish PEN, World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
Appeal against her arrest rejected by court
Kabaş’s lawyer Uğur Poyraz appealed against her arrest on the grounds that it was against the European Convention on Human Rights, the legal precedents of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Constitution on procedural grounds and as to the merits.
Poyraz requested that Sedef Kabaş be released on probation. Rejecting the appeal against Kabaş’s arrest, the İstanbul 58th Criminal Court of First Instance has referred to “the strong suspicion that the offense was committed publicly in its aggravated form and the fact that the suspect was put on trial before on a similar charge.”
Accordingly, the court has dismissed the appeal by concluding that “the ruling of arrest handed down by the İstanbul 10th Criminal Judgeship of Peace was not without due process of law or against the law.”
Backround
A conviction for insulting Turkey’s president can carry a sentence of up to four years in prison, with an added penalty if the insult was made in public, according to Article 299 of the Turkish penal code. The European Court of Human Rights has called on Turkey to change the law.
Between 2014, when Erdoğan became president, and October 2021, 160,169 cases were investigated under Article 299, with 35,507 cases going to trial and 12,881 convictions, according to Justice Ministry data cited by Reuters. Erdoğan’s “insult” cases reach beyond the borders of Turkey, including the president suing the Greek newspaper Dimokratia and French cartoon magazine Charlie Hebdo, as CPJ has documented.