Turkish woman jailed for insulting Ataturk
Conservative supporters of Turkey's authoritarian president have been uncharacteristically quiet on the arrest of a young woman for insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose legacy the ruling party has lately been trying to appropriate.
Insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the venerated founder of modern Turkey, remains a criminal offense, and laws protecting his legacy are being robustly applied by Turkey’s religious conservatives who have governed unchallenged since 2002. The latest violator was a 23-year-old woman who was arrested on July 22 for publicly declaring her hatred of the national hero.
Safiye Inci shot a video of herself at Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara saying she didn’t like Ataturk, that he hadn’t saved the country and that he couldn’t “even be Tayyip's shit.”
