The latest person to go to jail for insulting the Turkish president is not a journalist or activist, but former Miss Turkey, after she posted a satirical poem mocking President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on social media.
Merve Buyuksarac, 27, was sentenced to 14 months for "publicly insulting" Erdogan in a poem entitled "The Master's Poem," refers to the title "Buyuk Usta," or "the Big Master," often used by Erdogan's critics.
The model shared the poem while Erdogan was still serving as the country's prime minister, but cases of public figures and ordinary citizens being jailed for insulting him has risen sharply since he took the presidency in 2014. Almost 2,000 Turkish citizens have been prosecuted for insulting the president since then.
Buyuksarac won the Miss Turkey pageant in 2006 and has since worked as a model and appeared in reality TV shows.
She was briefly detained in January 2015, after which she admitted that she had shared the poem, but said she did not intend to insult Erdogan.
Ironically, Erdogan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting an Islamist-themed poem that authorities felt incited "religious hatred."
