Turkish Pianist Fazil Say Shouldn't Have Received Jail Term for Anti-Islamic Tweets

"potential risk for public peace"Did Fazil Say's tweets cause potential risk for public peace? Of course they did. For example, journalist and blogger Sevan Nisanyan was recently sentenced to 13 months in prison under the same law for writing the following comment (1)."It is not “hate crime” to poke fun at some Arab leader who, many hundred years ago, claimed to have established contact with Deity and made political, economic and sexual profit as a result. It is almost a kindergarten-level case of what we call freedom of expression."According to Nisanyan himself, these simple sentences have caused "a daily deluge of extremely graphic insults and death threats". He says "people are simply not used to a member of a non-Muslim minority to speak boldly and coherently on sensitive national and/or religious issues. It drives some people raving mad." (1)This is clearly a potential risk for public peace. And Fazil Say is more prominant figure than Nisanyan. He has over 52,000 followers on twitter (2), almost twice as many as Nisanyan (3). So the potential risk for public peace is even greater in his case.Pro argues that one of Say's tweets was actually a retweet and "even if these tweet was too dangerous for the public, he shouldn't have been responsible of it." If a racist organisation lends me a swastika flag and I pop it up in my front garden, am I absolved of responsibility because the flag isn't mine? Of course not. Fazil Say was borrowing words to express his own idea.Turkey is a democracyPro complains that this "abstract" risk isn't expounded enough. She doesn't like the law as it's written. Neither do I. However, Turkey is a democracy. The people of Turkey have chosen a government, and the laws of the government reflect the will of the people. According to the CIA, 99.8% of the population of Turkey are Muslims (4). These Muslims have chosen a conservative pro-Islamic government. The government writes laws that protect Islam. Protection from blasphemy must be more important to the people of Turkey than the protection of free speech. The sentencing of Fazil Say is an expression of democracy.The European Convention on Human Rights"Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others" (5)The European Court has interpreted "protection of public morals" as the right "not to be insulted in [one's] religious feelings by the public expression of views of other persons". (6) That is, democratic societies may put in place limitations on freedom of expression to protect the wider population's religious feeling from insult. The Turkish penal code falls within this interpretation.Most famously, the European Court upheld a previous Turkish government's decision to ban the headscarf in universities. Although this was a limitation on freedom to manifest one's religion, the court said:"Where questions concerning the relationship between State and religions are at stake, on which opinion in a democratic society may reasonably differ widely, the role of the national decision-making body must be given special importance... Rules in this sphere will consequently vary from one country to another according to national traditions and the requirements imposed by the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others and to maintain public order... Accordingly, the choice of the extent and form such regulations should take must inevitably be left up to a point to the State concerned, as it will depend on the specific domestic context ..." [my emphasis] (7)Thus, the European Court and I share the view that democratically elected representatives of the people are in the best position to balance the freedoms of the population.(1)http://www.theapricity.com...(2) https://twitter.com...(3) https://twitter.com...(4) https://www.cia.gov...(5) http://www.hri.org...(6) cited by http://fds.oup.com... pg 14(7) http://hudoc.echr.coe.int...#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-70956%22]} p.109