Put in jail for simple graffiti. A sixteen-year-old boy was arrested and jailed Tuesday night in Turkey for drawing a mustache for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on one of his campaign posters, Turkish press reported.
According to several media close to the opposition, such as the daily newspapers BirGun, Cumhuriyet and the private television channel Halk TV, the high school student from Mersin, on the south-east coast of the country, was accused of having "drawn with a ballpoint pen a mustache of Hitler and written insulting comments" on a poster of the head of state, pasted near his home.
Charged with "insulting the president"
Identified thanks to surveillance cameras, according to the press, he was arrested at the family home and questioned by the juvenile brigade where "he admitted to having drawn the mustache but denied the comments" that accompanied him. Brought before the prosecutor, he was immediately charged with "insulting the president" and incarcerated in the juvenile center of Tarsus prison, near Mersin, says Halk TV.
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"Insulting the president" is one of the most frequent charges in Turkey, where it was handed down 16,753 times in 2022, according to Justice Ministry statistics.
In power for twenty years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was re-elected on 28th May with 52% of the vote in the second round of the presidential election for a new five-year presidential term.
