Turkish Court Establishes A Special 'Expert Panel' To Determine If Comparing Prime Minister To Gollum Is An Insult

from the what-about-mocking-the-whole-thing? dept

The government of Turkey has a really... weird relationship with the internet. The government seems quite quick to attack internet services and to shut them down if anyone says anything even mildly critical of the government. Starting about six years ago, we noted that Turkey would do things like banning all of YouTube or Blogger to try to block a single mocking or critical video or blog post. These bans seemed to come and go -- sometimes leading the actual citizens of Turkey to protest the outright censorship of useful services. In the last couple of years, things have ramped up a bit. An attempt to block a single blog post resulted in 60 million Wordpress sites being blocked. Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan at one point ordered a ban on all of Twitter... even filing a lawsuit against his own government over this. There have also been attempts to ban Facebook. Oh, and Minecraft. In fact, just the other day the European Court of Human Rights said that Turkey's earlier YouTube ban violated freedom of expression in Turkey.

Indeed, that's pretty clearly the point. The Turkish government, and Erdogan in particular, don't want freedom of expression. Almost all of this stems from people posting jokes or mocking content about the government -- and Erdogan in particular. Erdogan seems to have incredibly thin skin for a ruler of a major country. But even with all of that as background, the latest story out of Turkey is super weird. A Turkish physician, Bilgin Ciftci, is in court for potentially insulting Erdogan via social media for sharing this image on social media: On the right are three photos of Erdogan. On the left? Of course, that's Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies. In other words, it's a silly social media joke, the kind you see all the time. Except Erdogan got offended and now Ciftci faces up to two years in jail. Except, making the situation even more bizarre, the judge in the case can't decide if comparing someone to Gollum is an insult, so he's establishing a special expert panel to determine whether or not the image is an insult:

The court ordered that the investigation be conducted by a group composed of two academics, two behavioral scientists or psychologists and an expert on cinema and television productions.

The chief judge gave the decision after Hicran Danisman, a lawyer representing Ciftci, asked him whether or not he had seen the movie series “The Lord of the Rings.” Saying that he had seen only seen parts of them, the chief judge postponed the hearing until Feb. 13, 2016. Danisman stated in a previous hearing that neither the prosecutor nor the chief judge had seen the movies, even though the character of Gollum was at the center of the case.
Ciftci claimed that Gollum was not a bad character and that he did not insult anyone.

I'm not sure I'd agree that Gollum "was not a bad character," but this is a joke on the internet. What kind of President gets upset about that? Ciftci, for his part, seems to recognize how ridiculous this is:

The 47-year-old doctor told The Independent that he was “very surprised” when he learned he would be prosecuted. The case, he said, showed that Turkey was going through “a very difficult time.” Asked if he regretted sharing the images, he said: "I see it as a question of freedom of speech and of humour. I don't think I've done anything to regret."

Maybe Turkey should just ban the internet from Erdogan's home and office.

In the meantime, of course, what's happening is that this silly jokey picture that Erdogan is apparently so offended by is getting shared absolutely everywhere, because what better way to point out how ridiculous it is to try to censor this image than to make sure it's seen by just about everyone. One wonders if Erdogan knows or cares about this -- or if he's just trying to create a chilling effect for others in the future. Still, if he wanted to cement his reputation as being particularly thin-skinned about public commentary and criticism, it's difficult to think of a better way to do so.

Filed Under: bilgin ciftci, chilling effect, free speech, gollum, insult, joke, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey

Spanish Police Park In Handicapped Spot, Fine Person Who Caught Them For 'Impugning Their Honor'

from the the-perfect-law-for-those-who-would-be-a-law-unto-themselves dept

A question that is almost always ignored when crafting legislation is "How will this new law be abused?" In the case of Spain's horrific Gag Law (officially [and hilariously] known as the "Citizen Security Law"), the answer is, "As much as possible."

Just a couple of weeks away from a Spanish citizen being fined for calling his local police force "slackers," a Spanish woman has been fined for posting a picture of police car parked in a handicapped spot to her Facebook page.

A Spanish woman has been fined €800 (£570) under the country’s controversial new gagging law for posting a photograph of a police car parked illegally in a disabled bay.

The unnamed woman, a resident of Petrer in Alicante, south-east Spain, posted the photo on her Facebook page with the comment “Park where you bloody well please and you won’t even be fined”.

The police tracked her down within 48 hours and fined her.

If nothing else, the new law has reset law enforcement priorities. If law enforcement is insulted, the perpetrator needs to be tracked down before the trail goes cold.

According to the original report at Petreraldia.com, differing narratives have emerged. One version of the incident says the officer who parked in the handicapped spot approached the photographer and explained the situation, apparently hoping to prevent a disparaging upload. If so, it didn't take. Another version says the uploader called to apologize to the police, presumably to ward off a citation. If so, that didn't take. And yet another version says there was no interaction between police and the photographer until they showed up at her home to hand her a ticket.

What really happened isn't important, because there's the Official Police Narrative. The spokesman for the police informed Petreraldia that "in an emergency" police are allowed to park wherever they want, so as to expedite the apprehension of suspects.

The "emergency" behind this illegal parking job? An "incident of vandalism in a nearby park."

And, of course, the only other official remnant of this one-two punch of exemplary policework is the €800 ticket.

It seems the police -- if they felt so demeaned by the Facebook post (which was swiftly removed by the original poster) -- could have asked for an apology, rather than €800. Or the department could have offered its explanation of the situation (as it did!), rather than fine the citizen. But the law is the law, and as such, must be abused to the fullest extent allowable.

Filed Under: dissent, free speech, gag law, insult, police, social media, spain