Turkish journalists facing jail time for reprinting Charlie Hebdo cover

The Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet. — (Image credit: Twitter.com/France24)

A Turkish prosecutor has accused two journalists of "insulting people's religious values" after they reprinted a Charlie Hebdo cover featuring a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed.

On Wednesday, the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet announced that columnists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya face jail terms of four-and-a-half years. "We are being threatened with prison for defending free speech," Karan told Reuters. "Neither of us will abandon our defense of free speech." The secular paper received threats after it printed the caricature in solidarity following the Jan. 7 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, and Karan has had a bodyguard ever since.

The prosecutor began investigating the journalists after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused the newspaper of "incitement." Turkey's penal code makes it a crime to insult religion.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.