Television anchor Sedef Kabaş was taken into custody after midnight over a series of posts on social media. Her lawyer Uğur Poyraz announced the detention, saying that Kabaş had called him to inform him of her arrest.
The İstanbul Anadolu Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office later confirmed the detention, citing her posts on X as grounds for the investigation. Prosecutors accused Kabaş of “insulting the president” and “inciting the commission of a crime.”
Kabaş was released today after being questioned. Prosecutors questioned Kabaş about three specific posts. The first, dated Sep 9, read, “Does anyone still think coups are carried out only by the military? Since Mar 19, the country has been ruled by a ‘civilian coup’... The strongest presidential candidate of the future has been imprisoned... Now, the country’s oldest and largest political party is being crushed!”
The second post continued in a similar tone: “From now on, elections will be for show only. There will be ballots, but no democracy. From this point forward, civil disobedience is the only solution.”
Both of these posts apparently referred to the Mar 19 detention of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the now-suspended mayor of İstanbul, who was declared the presential candidate of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
In a third post from Sep 29, Kabaş wrote, “They’ve made a plane without an engine... They graduated with fake diplomas, and they’re governing the country without legitimacy.” The statement was viewed as a jab at Turkey’s KAAN fighter jet project and long-time allegations concerning President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's university diploma.
BIA Media Monitoring Reports
Kabaş defends statements
Kabaş acknowledged writing the posts and argued they were protected under freedom of expression.
Referring to the first post, she said, “Calling the imprisonment of the strongest presidential candidate a fact rather than a comment is accurate. The internal disputes within the CHP, the lawsuits, and the effort to impose trustees on the party leadership all point to a collapse. This is not my personal opinion, but a sentiment shared and expressed by millions. My question, ‘Are coups only carried out by the military?’ obviously has a negative answer. Coups can be military, civilian, or economic. These are all forms of commentary.”
She continued, “There is no insult directed at the president in my posts, nor is there any indication of such an intent. There are no names, words, or phrases that would imply such a charge. There’s no call for violence, no weapons, no terrorist acts, and no hate speech.”
Kabaş defended her second post by saying, “Civil disobedience is a constitutional right, just like strikes, boycotts, resigning from Parliament, protests, and marches. What I meant was exercising a constitutional right. Prosecuting someone for advocating the use of constitutional rights is itself unlawful. There is no call to commit any crime in what I wrote.”
Following her statement, the prosecutor referred Kabaş to a criminal court with a request for judicial control. The court granted the request and released her under judicial supervision.
This is not the first time Kabaş has faced legal action. In 2022, she was jailed on charges of insulting the president, spending 49 days in detention before being sentenced to two years and four months in prison at her first hearing. She was released after the verdict.
On Feb 8, 2024, a new lawsuit was filed against her over a social media post, seeking a prison sentence of up to three years.
Most recently, Kabaş was sentenced to 10 months in prison for “publicly spreading misleading information” over another post related to Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan. The sentence was deferred. The post in question involved sharing Karahan’s reported remarks suggesting that electricity and natural gas prices could rise after the elections.
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Journalist Sedef Kabaş released after receiving prison sentence for 'insulting president'
(HA/VK)
