ISTANBUL: A Turkish court convicted a writer of “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a book about last year’s mass anti-government protests, handing him a suspended jail sentence of almost one year.
The Istanbul court in a closed hearing on Tuesday sentenced Erol Ozkoray to 11 months and 20 days in prison, but suspended the term for five years, the reports said.
He was convicted of “publicly insulting a civil servant” and damaging “Erdogan’s dignity and honour in the eyes of the public,” Dogan news agency reported.
Graffiti, slogans and banners used in the book, Phenomenon of Gezi, also insult Erdogan, who was elected president last month. In the book, co-written with his wife, Ozkoray wrote that the protests evolved into a “revolution” against the authoritarian tendencies of Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government. The protests began in June last year as a local movement to stop Istanbul’s Gezi Park from being razed but quickly blew up into wider nationwide demonstrations against Erdogan. AFP
