Beauty queen sentenced for 'insulting' Turkish President on Instagram

A Turkish court found a former Miss Turkey beauty queen guilty of 'insulting' President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on social media, handing her a suspended sentence of over one year in jail

Istanbul: A Turkish court found a former Miss Turkey beauty queen guilty of 'insulting' President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on social media, handing her a suspended sentence of over one year in jail.

Merve Buyuksarac. Pic/Getty Images

The Istanbul court sentenced model Merve Buyuksarac (27) to one year and two months in prison for “publicly insulting” Erdogan in a satirical poem she posted on her Instagram account.

The punishment has been suspended, it added, without giving further details. The “Master’s Poem” — which was shared by the model while Erdogan was serving as prime minister — criticises the Turkish strongman with verses adapted from the national anthem.

Ironically, Erdogan was himself sent to jail in 1999 for reciting, while mayor of Istanbul, an Islamist-tinged poem that the then authorities deemed was guilty of “inciting religious hatred”.

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