Freedom, Turkish-style

There have been two interesting recent news stories from Turkey.

From Naharnet:

A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced a group of protesters to two years in jail for chanting slogans deemed insulting to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, local media reported on Wednesday.

The decision comes as Turkey is being criticized at home and abroad for adopting new Internet restrictions seen as a fresh assault on freedom of expression.

Seventeen people in the city of Eskisehir were sued in 2012 for "insulting a civil servant" after chanting slogans during a small demonstration against the government's health policies, the newspaper Hurriyet said.

"Tayyip Erdogan: the servant of the IMF, the servant of the bosses," the group had chanted.

The court sentenced all 17 to two years in jail for "deliberately insulting the premier and not regretting their actions".

The defendants are not entitled to appeal the decision, Hurriyet said.

And from Hurriyet:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has acknowledged that he called a media executive at the height of the Gezi protests to order the removal of news content, days after an alleged phone transcript of the exchanged was leaked online, sparking anger over political pressure on the media.

“About the phone call from Morocco, yes indeed, I called. I only made some reminders. And those
individuals to whom I conveyed the reminders regarding the news ticker did what was necessary,” Erdoğan said Feb. 11 following a journalist’s question during a joint press conference in Ankara with visiting Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy.

“When such insults are made, I or my friends call to tell [newspaper executives] … I don’t know if it is wrong [telling them] this. But we have to teach such things because the insults that were being made were not ordinary,” Erdoğan said.

In the recording, Erdoğan is heard demanding that private broadcaster Habertürk’s executive remove a news ticker feed referring to a statement by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli at the height of the Gezi Park resistance last June. In the news ticker, Bahçeli called on President Abdullah Gül to “do his duty” and intervene in the Gezi protests, and it was not clear to which “extraordinary insults” the prime minister was referring.

Erdoğan’s statements came after the editor-in-chief of daily Habertürk, owned by the same media group, also acknowledged regular phone calls from government officials, publicly claiming to be under constant political pressure.

Given how corrupt and dictatorial Turkey's leader is, I'm not so sure that a rapprochement from Israel with Turkey makes sense while he remains in office.