Turkish police have jailed one of the country's most prominent cartoonists to serve out a 14 month sentence first handed down last year on charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish media reported on Tuesday.
Nuri Kurtcebe, 69, was detained and sent to prison Monday after a police check found him on a bus travelling in the northwestern Turkish city of Yalova, the private Dogan news agency reported. His lawyer Erdem Akyuz told the media that the authorities were enforcing the sentence after an appeal was turned down by an upper court.
Kurtcebe was sentenced to a one year, two months and 15 days jail term for several caricatures he drew in 2015. As is customary in Turkey, he had been allowed to remain free while the appeal was pending. But once the appeal was rejected, an arrest warrant was issued.
"What's recognised in all over the world is that artists express their work freely and that politicians, compared to others, are more tolerant to criticism," Akyuz was quoted as saying by Dogan. Akyuz also said that it was not clear in the court's ruling which cartoons or expressions were the source of the charges.
Kurtcebe, whose daily cartoons were published in the Aydinlik newspaper, also drew for a number of publications including Hurriyet and opposition Cumhuriyet newspapers as well as satirical magazine Girgir.
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