An illiterate woman has been summoned to a police station in Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakır due to a social media message she allegedly posted, JIN News reported.
Fifty-nine-year-old Şükran Akboğa was summoned by the Diyarbakır police two weeks ago as part of an investigation launched into her due to a social media message she supposedly posted. The woman, who was recovering from bypass surgery, had to go to the police station in a wheelchair.
In remarks to JIN News, Akboğa said the police insisted that she come to the station despite the fact that she was medically unfit to do so.
“I told the police I don’t know how to read or write and that I don’t know Turkish, either. There was no translator,” said Akboğa, adding that she could not give a deposition because she was unable to go upstairs in the wheelchair and there was no translator to translate her Kurdish in Turkish.
The police officers told the woman to go back home and that she would later be summoned by the prosecutor’s office.
“I haven’t yet received a summons from the prosecutor’s office. I don’t know when I will,” said Akboğa.
The content of the social media message allegedly posted by the woman is not known, but hundreds of people are prosecuted in Turkey on charges of insulting the president or government officials in their social media messages.
Insulting the president is a crime in Turkey, according to the controversial Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). Whoever insults the president can face up to four years in prison, a sentence that can be increased if the crime was committed through the mass media.