A Turkish court has deemed the photos uploaded on social media by a Turkish influencer posing, among other things, with a sculpture of a large phallus at the Sex Museum in Amsterdam to be inappropriate.
23-year-old Merve Taşkın received a five month suspended prison from a Turkish court.
Celebrating her birthday in January 2021 in the Dutch capital, the young woman uploaded photos on social media depicting her "riding" a sculpture of a male phallus.
For these photos, she paid the price, as the British newspaper The Daily Mail commented.
With 571,000 followers on Instagram, Taşkın was arrested three months later by the Turkish authorities in the Dardanelles.
The "offending" photos were removed from her Instagram account.
Under Turkish law, those who publish obscene material face up to three years in prison. The court initially sentenced Taşkın to six months in prison.
However, her sentence was reduced to five months with suspension due to good behaviour.
The 23-year-old influencer posed with her lawyers outside the court and uploaded the controversial photo on Instagram with the caption:
The influencer took to Instagram to write: "The prosecution office gave its opinion to our detriment.
"Against the opinion, we stated that, in general, my posts are within the limits of freedom of expression, that there is no precedent in the world, and that this concrete situation does not mean that our investigation authority is conducting an investigation that will set an example to the world, but that it shows how far behind the world we are in terms of freedom of expression."
For her part, the director of the Sex Museum in Amsterdam, Monique van Marle, hurried to praise her and spoke to reporters about the message he sent her:
"Our museum is intended to educate people all around the world about the history of sex. We admire you for expressing yourself and posting such pictures," she stressed.
READ MORE: Erdoğan and Imran Khan gave the driving seat to emotion and the back seat to reason.
