Türkiye: Swedish journalist condemned to insult Erdogan

In Turkey, a Swedish journalist has been sentenced to eleven months of imprisonment for the accusation of insulting presidential insult. Due to a further procedure in connection with allegations of terrorist, he had not been released, but still in custody, the MLSA lawyer’s association said. In both cases, the journalist rejects the allegations.

Kaj Joakim Medin, who works for the Swedish daily newspaper “Dagens etc.”, was arrested and arrested at the end of March shortly after his landing in Istanbul.

The accusation of presidential insult should be related to a demonstration in 2023 in Stockholm, in which a portrait of Erdogan was hung on the outside of the town hall. According to MLSA, Medin said that he had never participated in the protest and being abroad. Photos with which some of his journalistic texts had been illustrated and which were charged to him in the procedure, for example. “My intention was never to insult President Erdogan,” Mlsa quoted him.

Medin continues to be accused of membership in an armed terrorist organization, as the state news agency Anadolu reported. According to this, the Swede is said to have spread “propaganda” for the forbidden Kurdish workers’ party PKK on social media. According to Anadolu, the authorities also referred to Medin’s reporting from Syria, Iraq and the southeast of Türkiye between 2014 and 2017. The process is still pending.