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| Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan |
A famous Turkish singer and actress has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for insulting President Tayyip Erdogan during a performance in 2016, the Hurriyet newspaper said on Thursday.
Singer Zuhal Olcay was accused of changing the lyrics of one of her songs by substituting Erdoganโs name into it and making an insulting hand gesture while singing, Hurriyet said.
Video from the performance showed Olcay changing her songโs lyrics to read โRecep Tayyip Erdogan, itโs all empty, itโs all a lie, life will end one day and youโll say โI had a dreamโ,โ Hurriyet said.
In her testimony, Olcay rejected the accusations, saying she had used Erdoganโs name because it fit the rhyme scheme and had no โulterior or insulting motiveโ. She said the hand gesture was aimed at an audience member.
Olcay was previously fined 10,620 lira ($2,708) for โinsulting a public servantโ in 2010, according to the state-run Anadolu agency.
Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison in Turkey.
Lawyers for Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade, have filed more than 1,800 cases against people including cartoonists, a former Miss Turkey winner and school children on accusations of insulting him.
Enes Kanter, a Turkish basketball player in the US NBA team New York Knicks, is also standing trial in absentia for insulting Erdogan.
Following the 2016 failed coup, Erdogan said he would drop outstanding suits, in a one-off gesture, but several new cases have since emerged.
Rights groups and some Western governments have voiced concern that Turkey is sliding toward authoritarianism, criticising a crackdown which saw some 150,000 people sacked or suspended from their jobs and more than 50,000 jailed pending trial on suspicion of links to the failed coup.
The government says such measures are necessary to ensure stability and defend Turkey from multiple security threats.
