Story By: Feza Uzay, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency:  Newsflash

A Turkish woman has been sentenced to five months in prison for ‘insulting men’ in a tweet where the court heard she wrote ‘I don’t like men’.

Pinar Yildirim, 34, who is a book author and influencer campaigning for women’s rights, said jailing a woman for writing ‘I don’t like men’ was bizarre in a country where “women are humiliated, insulted and harassed in every field”.

Yet leaving that aside, she said the really shocking thing was that she was jailed for something that she had not even written, as can be seen in the tweet, which is still online.

She decided to post the comment on Twitter where she has 1.9 million followers after a statement by Turkish media authorities that implied watching Netflix content encourages homosexuality.

She said: “RTUK (Radio and Television Supreme Council) made a statement that Netflix content encourages homosexuality. They had a gay character removed from the series named Ask 101 (Love 101). I posted this tweet based on that. A sensible person knows that by watching TV, he/she will not be gay.”

She added: “I’ve watched so many gay TV shows, I’ve finished movie after movie, no, no! I still like the vile, characterless sex called men….”

But when she turned up at court, ‘I still like men’ had been changed to ‘I don’t like men’ in the case file.

Yildirim is appealing the conviction, which will see her jailed for five months if she loses.

She told Newsflash: “The case is currently on appeal.”

She said that her conviction was an “unprecedented case” in the country and added: “Recently, the court decided not to prosecute a male individual who cursed a female journalist and most importantly made a death threat.

“Women are humiliated, insulted and harassed in every field, and our courts prefer to be insensitive to these issues for some reason.”

Yildirim added: “Systematically, my tweets were already being reported to the police by a certain group. I go to the police station almost every week to testify.

“People were looking at it as if nothing would come out of this case, and everyone was shocked, of course.

“Except for a small group of guys, they were rejoicing. Even the prison sentence was not enough for them, there were also those who wanted me dead and wrote in detail about how they would rape me.”

Discussing what needed to change in society for the situation of women in Turkey to improve, Yildirim simply replied: “Men :)”

Asked if she thought women were treated equally to men she said: “Of course not. Every week a woman is killed because of domestic violence. These murders are romanticised in the press and presented as ‘love murders’.

“I’m not even talking about the mobbing at work… We can’t even go out on the street at the same time as men, because if something happens to us, they will say, ‘what was she doing there at that hour?'”

According to the United Nations, 38 percent of women in Turkey have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from their partner.

Asked in the interview if she was a feminist, she said: “It is very difficult to define oneself as a feminist in Turkey. Men decide whether you are a feminist or not.”

And asked about equality between men and women she said: “It’s irritating to even talk about it in 2021. Surely it should be equal?”