The prison sentence of 1 year, 14 months and 7 days handed down to cartoonist Nuri Kurtcebe on charges of “insulting the president” has been upheld. According to Barış Pehlivan, a writer for the Cumhuriyet newspaper; Ahmet Ergun Ciritci, the lawyer for 78-year-old Kurtcebe, argued that his client—who is 90 percent disabled and suffers from cancer and COPD—is unfit to remain in prison due to his health condition. He requested that the sentence be suspended and that a new report be obtained from the Institute of Forensic Medicine.
A previous application for Kurtcebe’s sentence to be served under house arrest was rejected by the Fethiye 2nd Sentence Enforcement Court. The court cited the argument that the application of special conditions of imprisonment would be “of a nature that encourages the commission of offenses” from the convict’s perspective. Lawyer Ciritci objected to this reasoning and to the medical board’s report stating that Kurtcebe was fit to remain in prison, and requested that the contradictions regarding his health condition be resolved.
