A court has convicted a former Miss Turkey of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through social media postings and handed her a 14-month suspended sentence. The court in Istanbul found 27-year-old model Merve Buyuksarac guilty of insulting a public official but immediately suspended the sentence on condition that she does not re-offend within the next five years. Her lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg, France. Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing a satirical poem on her Instagram account in 2014. Prosecutors deemed it to be insulting to Mr Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time. She has denied insulting him. Since becoming president in 2014, Mr Erdogan has filed close to 2,000 defamation cases under a previously seldom-used law that bars insulting the president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to silence and intimidate critics. The trials have targeted journalists, academics and even schoolchildren. Coupled with a crackdown on opposition media and journalists, the trials have...
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