Does Erdoğan have any skin?
Turkey doesn’t allow any lèse-majesté when people mention Erdoğan. People who lèse the majesté of Erdoğan get busted.
The boss of a cafeteria at a Turkish opposition newspaper has been detained after saying he would refuse to serve tea to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Senol Buran, cafeteria head at Cumhuriyet, was remanded accused of insulting the president. He denies the refusal was an insult, his lawyer said.
Trump would do the same thing if he could, but fortunately he can’t. He can’t stop us calling him a short-fingered vulgarian, a fascist, a bully, an ignorant shallow conceited stupid loudmouth, a tiny-fisted Nazi, a Cheeto, the pussygrabber-in-chief, a sexist racist pig, a fraud, a thief, a very bad man.
Mr Buran was on his way to work on 24 December when he found roads were closed as part of security measures for a speech being given by Mr Erdogan.
Mr Buran told police officers: “I would not serve that man a cup of tea.”
A judge at the Istanbul criminal court jailed Mr Buran pending a trial.
Insulting the president can carry a four-year jail term.
Senol Buran is in jail awaiting trial for saying he wouldn’t serve Erdoğan a cup of tea. It’s revolting.
He can’t…yet. A repeat of the various freedom busting acts that are often justified by a state of war, in which people go to jail for saying things? Possibly. It could happen here.
And right now, he certainly can get away with incitement to violence by deniable followers – and we’re crossing our fingers that police will deal even with the immediate perpetrators appropriately.
I guess it’s something that we still have a fig-leaf of free speech, but it’s not a right we can safely jump up and down on in the confidence that it will get robust recognition.
Serious question: What percentage of Trump voters would approve of similar laws here, do you think?
Ben, from my admittedly informal surveys, most of them would, as long as the laws were finely crafted to shut up liberals, non-believers, minorities, and women. Once those laws turned their scope on the “fine white male people” that believe (erroneously) that they built this country single-handedly, and keep it running thanklessly, then they will squawk – but by then, they may find it’s a situation of “first they came for….”