A local prosecutor has demanded a two year prison sentence for two students of Samsun University for allegedly throwing darts at a board covered with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's photo, Hurriyet Daily News reports.
Yıldırım Beyazıt Besim and Mert Deniz Özkaya, students at the Black Sea province’s Ondokuz Mayıs University, participated in a protest against new educational reforms last year in August by throwing darts at a dartboard featuring Erdoğan’s picture. After the two threw the darts, police forces intervened to prevent others from doing so.
After a probe was launched into the incident, the two were charged with “overt defamation of a public official.”
"No kinds of opposition are tolerated in Turkey," Besim said, adding that their act was a democratic demand, not defamation.
Democracy and freedom of speech in Turkey, which has been trying to join the EU for several years, constantly draw the attention of European bodies.
