Turkish Columnist Heads to Prison for Insulting Erdogan

(Bloomberg) -- A Turkish newspaper columnist critical of the ruling party and its nationalist ally is going to jail for a year for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“As you read these lines, I will pick up the bag I have been keeping ready behind the door and go to prison,” Yavuz Selim Demirag said in a column Thursday published by his employer, the Yenicag daily. “There are countless other ongoing cases against me.”

Demirag is being punished for comments made at a panel four years ago about lawmakers’ immunity, he told Bloomberg by phone. “I am ashamed of my country’s status as the top jailer of journalists in the world,” he said.

Last month, Demirag was beaten by an angry mob with baseball bats after he appeared on a talk show. His injuries were serious enough to require hospitalization, but the six suspects detained after the incident were released, according to the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Turkey has been the world’s worst jailer of journalists for five of the past seven years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists advocacy group. Tens of thousands have been investigated for insulting the president, and the owners and top editors of leading opposition newspapers have been jailed, detained or put on trial.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cagan Koc in Istanbul at ckoc2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Paul Abelsky

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