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Turkey politician faces 17 years for ‘insulting’ tweets
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Hundreds gathered at Istanbul's main court on Friday to support an opposition politician who faces 17 years in prison for a series of tweets criticizing the government.Canan Kaftancioglu, who heads the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s Istanbul branch, is accused of "insulting" President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First  ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important...and the The supporters gathered outside the court chanted "Down with fascism ...a political system developed in Italy, symbolized by the Roman fasces-- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. Its distinguishing philosophical feature is the Corporate State. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about... " and held signs reading "We are thirsty for justice". Kaftancioglu’s tweets include an insult directed at Erdogan, and criticism of the death of a 14-year-old boy, who was hit by a tear gas grenade during the mass "Gezi Park" protests of 2013.  She is also accused of "terrorist propaganda" for quoting a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), which has been fighting a bloody insurgency against the state since 1983.Her supporters say another tweet, in which she appeared to deny the Armenian genocide, was fake and had been created to smear her. "This trial, as everyone knows, is a political trial," said a lawyer for the CHP outside the court. "We are once again before the court for a case that is unjust, outside of the law and without any foundation." Kaftancioglu was a key figure in the campaign to elect Ekrem Imamoglu, the new CHP mayor of Istanbul ‐ whose landslide victory this week marked the first significant defeat for Erdogan since he took power in 2003. There was little progress in the trial itself on Friday, with the case quickly adjourned until July 18. Posted by: Fred 2019-06-29 |
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