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Rabat – Turkish police forces have arrested a Moroccan tourist after she described Turkey as a “terrorist state” and insulted its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s breaking news agency SonDakika reported earlier today.
The news outlet said that the owners of the shops in Jamekiber neighborhood area informed the police forces after hearing the Moroccan woman insult the Turkish state and its president. Police immediately arrived and arrested the Moroccan woman.
A video documenting the incident was uploaded on YouTube last night.
This is not the first time that tourists were arrested in Turkey for insulting Erdogan. According to SonDakika, “there are thousands of people detained in Turkey on charges of insulting Erdogan and the state, and dozens of foreigners were arrested on the same charge.”
Read also: Police Arrest Suspect in ‘Abnormal State’ After Threatening Safety of Tourists in Taghazout
In a similar incident on December 30, 2016, Turkish authorities arrested a Canadian tourist for “allegedly insulting the country’s president” on Facebook, the BBC reported in January 2017.
According to article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code, it is a crime to “insult Turkey’s President.” A person found guilty of violating this article can face a prison term of one to four years, and if the violation was committed in public, the sentence can even be increased to six years. This law is applicable to foreign tourists as well.
According to The Times, Turkey’s interior minister Suleyman Soylu said in March 2019 that the state will detain any tourists that were “suspected of opposing President Erdogan’s regime … as soon as they set foot on Turkish soil.”
President Erdogan’s popularity in Turkey has witnessed a “noticeable decline” as the country continues to grapple with soaring inflation and an unending cycle of interlocked crises.
Once hailed as the model of democracy and inclusive development in the Muslim world, Turkey has gone through a cascade of arbitrary arrests and illiberal reforms the past decade. While most observers point to 2012-13 as the beginning of Turkey’s descent into authoritarianism, the failed coup on July 15, 2016, was indubitably the point of no return in Erdogan’s authoritarian drift.
