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A Turkish social-media influencer has reportedly been handed a five-month suspended sentence for violating obscenity laws in her country after she posed with a giant penis at the world-famous Sex Museum in Amsterdam.
Merve Taskin, 23, who boasts about 573,000 followers on Instagram, used the site to share images of sex toys she bought at the museum during a birthday trip to the Netherlands in January 2020.
In one eye-popping image, the daring brunette is seen straddling the massive member as she sits on a pair of gargantuan gonads.
Other images she posted included penis-shaped pasta, a “sexy bottle opener” and a snap of her standing behind a door designed after a brothel in the Dutch capital’s famous Red Light District.
While Taskin deemed the snaps innocent enough, Turkish authorities took offense and slapped her with the charges under her country’s obscenity-related Article 226 of the penal code.
Under Turkish law, Taskin faced up to three years in the slammer, but she was handed a not-so-stiff five-month suspended sentence, the Daily Star reported.
She wrote on her Instagram page that the sentence means “if I do not deliberately commit a crime within five years, the provision will be annulled with all its consequences.”
“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,” she added in the post, according to a translation from Turkish.
“However, the court would not agree with us, so it sentenced me to five months in prison,” Taskin said.
Museum Director Monique van Marle said after the sentence was handed down that the facility “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 added, the Daily Star said.
Human-rights groups have said freedom of expression online has taken a hit in Turkey under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey “remains one of most challenging places in the European region to exercise one’s right to free speech and expression,” according to Freedom House, a nonprofit group that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights.
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