In 2018 we published an essay by Peter Pomerantsev examining the new threats to press freedom and arguing for a new charter of digital rights. This week, a journalist in Turkey was arrested for tweeting a joke about a TV show. 

On Monday, Oktay Candemir, a Kurdish journalist in the city of Van in eastern Turkey, was detained by local police for “insulting the memory of a dead person” — the supposedly wronged party being a 13th-century Ottoman sultan.

The charges stemmed from a tweet posted by Candemir on September 3, in which he made light of an upcoming series produced by the Turkish state broadcaster TRT. The show, which will dramatize the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia, is part of a trend of new programming glorifying Turkey’s past. Candemir’s tweet mockingly suggested prominent Ottoman sultans as characters for similar shows.

Authorities didn’t find it funny and Candemir now faces up to two years in prison. He was briefly placed under house arrest and, while his case is pending, remains subject to a foreign travel ban. According to U.S.-based organization the Committee to Protect Journalists, his computer was confiscated by police.