Turkish Comedy Veterans in Court After TV Attack Riles Erdogan
Source: Bloomberg
Two of Turkey’s most prominent comedy actors were hauled before a court after a no holds barred take-down of authoritarian rule that appeared to allude to a grisly end for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Police on Monday escorted Metin Akpinar and Mujdat Gezen first to the prosecutor’s office in Istanbul for questioning and then to a court, where the two were banned from traveling abroad and ordered to report to a police station every week. Authorities will consider whether to press criminal charges.
The freedom to publicly criticize Erdogan and his government has been severely curtailed in Turkey two years after a failed military coup. What began as a round-up of followers of the self-exiled cleric Ankara says orchestrated the attempted putsch has expanded into a crackdown on journalists, academics and celebrities opposed to the concentrating of vast executive powers in the presidency, a shift approved in a 2017 referendum.
Akpinar and Gezen drew Erdogan’s ire on Friday as they appeared on Halk TV, a channel supported by the main opposition party CHP. “Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you can’t test our patriotism, know your boundaries,” said Gezen. That sparked applause, cheers and whistles from the audience at a convention center in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, some of whom shouted in unison “we’re soldiers of Mustafa Kemal,” a reference to the founder of Turkey’s secular republic, Ataturk.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-24/turkish-comedy-veterans-in-court-after-tv-attack-riles-erdogan?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_medium=social&utm_content=business&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic
Interesting that Trump recently wanted to haul Saturday Night Live to court for making fun of him.
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