Two Penguen Cartoonists Sued By Erdogan For August 2014 Cover



Turkey's getting-on-two-decade policy of using the court system to suppress free speech including expression in cartoon form continued late last week when two cover cartoonists for the satirical Penguen, Bahadır Baruter and Ozer Aydogan, were sued by former Prime Minister and current President Recep Erdogan under vague insulting-public-officials laws. At issue seems to be the hand gesture of the man above, which lawyers for the president believe is casting aspersions on him as a sign between two gay men.

Erdogan has had only intermittent success applying these laws in speech, social media and cartoon cases, but it hasn't stopped him from trying. Since 2014, over 170 people have been investigated with more than 70 cases entering into the courts. I think it's literallly one of the worst things in the world not involving direct bodily harm: a law with dubious logic unnecessarily brought to bear against a case that it shouldn't cover at the behest of one of the richest and most powerful people in the world against people with relatively little protection and wealth to fight it.
 
posted 11:59 pm PST | Permalink
 

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