A Turkish teenager was imprisoned for drawing the president’s moustache

The young man was identified through images from surveillance cameras, and he was charged with “insulting the president.”

By Le Figaro with AFP

published On 07/06/2023 at 10:28to update On 07/06/2023 at 10:50

A 16-year-old boy was arrested and imprisoned on Tuesday night in Turkey for drawing a mustache for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on one of his campaign posters, Turkish newspapers reported.

According to a number of media outlets close to the opposition, such as the Birgun daily newspaper, Cumhuriyet and the private TV channel Halk TV, the high school student from Mersin on the country’s southeastern coast was accused of being “He drew Hitler’s mustache with a ballpoint pen and wrote insulting commentsOn a poster of the head of state, which was pasted near his house.

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The press said that he was identified thanks to surveillance cameras, and was arrested at the family home and interrogated by the Juvenile Brigade, where “He admitted to drawing the mustache but denied the commentswho accompanied him. Appearing before the Public Prosecutor, he was promptly charged.”insult to the presidentThey were imprisoned in the juvenile center of Tarsus prison, near Mersin, according to Hulk Channel.

In power for twenty years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reappointed on May 28 with 52% of the vote in the second round of presidential elections for a new five-year term. “Insulting the President of the RepublicOne of the most frequent fees in Turkey, where it was issued 16,753 times in 2022, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Justice.