Sedef Kabas was taken to a prison in Istanbul. A court had previously ordered her arrest for “insulting the President.” And this accusation is not trivial. Such insulting the President is a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment for up to four years and eight months.
It’s almost a joke: The journalist had previously criticized the government on television for its crackdown on critics and for its polarization of society. “When an ox goes into a palace, it doesn’t become a king, the palace becomes a stable,” she later tweeted an old adage.
That went too far for members of the cabinet and Erdogan spokesman Fahrettin Altun. They described the journalist as “immoral” and “irresponsible”. The Turkish media regulator RTUK, meanwhile, launched a separate investigation into the broadcaster Tele 1 for “unacceptable statements against our president”.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that Kabas has been in prison. In 2014, she was briefly detained for a message on social media. At the time, she had criticized the public prosecutor’s office for dropping a corruption investigation in which Erdogan was also involved.
