The young man was identified from surveillance camera images and charged with “insulting the President”.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published on 07/06/2023 at 10:28 AM, updated on 07/06/2023 at 10:50 AM
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Election campaign posters in Istanbul. YASIN AKGUL
A 16-year-old boy was arrested and jailed in Turkey on Tuesday night for drawing a mustache for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on one of his campaign posters, the Turkish press reports.
According to several pro-opposition media outlets including BirGun daily, Cumhuriyet and private TV station Halk TV, the high school student from Mersin on the country’s south-east coast was accused of “drawing with a pen” on “I wrote a Hitler mustache and wrote offensive comments”. a poster of the head of state posted near his home.
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Identified by surveillance cameras, the press said, he was arrested at the family home and questioned by juvenile police, where he “admitted pulling his mustache but denied the comments that accompanied him.” He was brought before the prosecutor, immediately charged with “insulting the president” and detained in the juvenile center of Tarsus prison near Mersin, Halk TV specifies.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power for 28 years, was reappointed to a new five-year term as president on May 28 with 52% of the vote in the second round of the presidential election. “Insulting the President” is one of the most common allegations in Turkey, and according to Justice Ministry statistics, it was raised 16,753 times in 2022.