A Turkish court has sentenced journalist and academic Erol Mutersimler to 10 months in prison on charges of “insulting the country’s religious values.” This was reported by the T24 news website.
The charge relates to comments Mutersimler made during a television programme, in which he criticised the Imam Hatip religious schools. “Today, graduates of Imam Hatip schools appear before us as sexual perverts, thieves and fraudsters,” he said. The head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbas, deemed his remarks “unacceptable.”
Turkish President Recep Erdogan is an ardent supporter of the Imam Hatip schools, which train Islamic clerics. The number of graduates of such schools has risen sharply during Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 18-year rule, from 450 to more than 5,000.
In total, 16 people, including the son of the Minister of Industry and Technology, who is also a graduate of this school, filed criminal complaints with the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office over Mutersimler’s remarks, T24 reports.
