An Ankara court on Tuesday handed down a 21-month suspended jail sentence to an editor of an English-language Turkish daily newspaper after convicting him of “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdoðan.
The Ankara penal court said Today’s Zaman editor-in-chief Bülent Keneþ was guilty of “insulting” Erdoðan in a tweet, which implied Erdoðan’s late mother would have been ashamed of him had she lived to see what he was doing to Turkey, Agence France-Presse had reported.
Erdoðan’s mother Tenzile died in 2011 and the then-prime minister had grieved publicly for his loss.
The tweet was posted in July 2014, when Erdoðan was serving his last months as prime minister just before he became the country’s first president elected by popular vote in August 2014.
In his defense, Keneþ argued he was protected by Turkish law on freedom of speech and noted he did not even indicate in the tweet that he was referring to Erdoðan.