I hadn't heard about the case of Turkish journalist Sedef Kabas until I saw this in today's newspaper, reprinted from the Washington Post. She was jailed Saturday for "insulting" strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
What did she say or do?
While on a television program focused on Erdogan and political polarization in Turkey, she recited this proverb: "When the ox goes to the palace, he does not become a king. But the palace becomes a barn."
In any free country, that would obviously be a matter of opinion, which any person should be able to say about the country's leader.
The story says that "tens of thousands of people are investigated ever year for insulting the president..."
Why is it considered bad to insult the president, let alone a crime? What's the logic?
According to Erdogan's spokesman, quoted in the story, insults like Kabas's have "no goal other than spreading hatred.... The honor of the presidency is the honor of our nation."
All of this sounds familiar in a couple of ways. Donald Trump wanted (wants) U.S. laws to make it illegal to insult him, and he clearly thought that he was the presidency and the presidency was the state. None of which was or is true of our system of government or freedom of speech under the Constitution, of course. So far.
But beyond Trump, the idea that an act of speech that points out a truth (or even makes a metaphorical observation about someone) is bad because it "spreads hatred" sounds a lot like the recent ginned up backlash against teaching the history of white supremacy or the existence of structural racism in this country.
Spreading fear of incarceration for having a negative opinion of your country's dear leader is the opposite of freedom. One would think this was obvious. But nothing that seemed obvious for most of my life appears obvious to the people who control power in this country anymore.
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