Erdogan deals personally with journalist Kabashi: He insulted me, he will be punished

Police detained journalist Seedef Kabash at her house at 2 p.m. on Saturday, just hours after she spoke the comments publicly and published them at Titter for 900,000 of her followers, writes The Guardian.

The alleged insult was a proverb, which is translated in Albanian: When the ox comes into the palace, he does not become king, but the palace becomes a barn. ”

This insult will not go unpunished. It's our duty to protect the respect of my office, the presidency. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression”, the Turkish president said in an interview aired on private television, NTV.

He criticised the opposition Republican People's Party's suggestion that the crime of insulting the president, for which people could be sentenced to one to four years in prison, be abolished.

The Turkish journalists' association has called Kabashi's arrest “serious attacks on freedom of expression”.

Human rights groups regularly accuse Turkey of minimising press freedom by arresting journalists and closing media that criticised power, especially from July 2016, when Erdogan had survived a stamp.

The organisation “Reporters Without Borders” has ranked Turkey 153rd on the list of 180 states in terms of the 2021 media freedom index.