{"id":20217,"date":"2016-04-25T14:08:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T19:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20217"},"modified":"2016-04-25T14:08:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T19:08:47","slug":"affairs-of-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20217","title":{"rendered":"Affairs of State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Affairs of State\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Insulting Mr. Erdo<\/strong>\u011fan Can Be Dangerous<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of our readers are probably aware by now that the German government finds itself in a rather awkward situation over its relations with Turkey\u2019s government again \u2013 with which the EU has just struck a widely criticized and\u00a0very<\/em>\u00a0expensive deal to help it stem the flood of refugees.<\/p>\n

One thing is absolutely certain about Turkey\u2019s president Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan: He has no sense of humor whatsoever.\u00a0 As of early March 2016,\u00a01,845 lawsuits were pending in Turkey for \u201cinsulting the president\u201d<\/a>. To see how extremely ridiculous most of these cases are, consider the one involving the pictures below:<\/p>\n

\"golloerd22a\"Bilgin \u00c7ift\u00e7i was fired from his job at Turkey\u2019s public health service last October<\/a>\u00a0and detained after comparing Erdo\u011fan to Gollum. He could face up to two years in prison. His lawyer Hicran Danisman said she was forced to argue in court that \u201cGollum is not a bad character\u201d because she \u201cgot nowhere with a defense case based on freedom of expression\u201d. The trial has now been adjourned to give the court time to \u201cconsult with a group of experts on whether Gollum is a good or a bad character\u201d.<\/p>\n

Two\u00a0prominent Turkish journalists<\/a>\u00a0are even facing possible\u00a0life sentences<\/em>\u00a0over what appear to be trumped-up treason charges after they reported on Turkey\u2019s shady dealings with ISIS. A great many other journalists have lost their jobs and\/ or are at risk of getting jail sentences. Not surprisingly, Turkey currently finds itself on place 149 of 180 on the global press freedom list. In short, it is quite dangerous to criticize or make fun of Mr. Erdo\u011fan. This is a great pity, considering what an extremely inviting target he is.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Affairs of State\u00a0 Insulting Mr. Erdo\u011fan Can Be Dangerous Most of our readers are probably aware by now that the German government finds itself in a rather awkward situation over its relations with Turkey\u2019s government again \u2013 with which the EU has just struck a widely criticized and\u00a0very\u00a0expensive deal to help it stem the flood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5728,13618,279,284,13619,1239,446,447,462,6170,938,1908,818],"class_list":["post-20217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-acting-man","tag-bilgin-ciftci","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-gollum","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-journalism","tag-pater-tenebrarum","tag-press-freedom","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20219,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20217\/revisions\/20219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}