The 18-year-old Itir Esen was crowned Miss World Turkey 2017 on 21st September 2017 and forcibly dethroned within 24 hours of her crowning due to a controversial tweet about a failed government coup in Turkey. Now it seems that she could be put in jail for up to one year on charges of “publicly denigrating.”
From what information has been gathered till now, the basis of allegation put on her is, “public condescending some part of society based on their class, race, religion, sect, gender or regional differences.” This was stated by the private Dogan news agency. An Istanbul court will decide whether she will be charged with the imprisonment or not within the next 15 days.
In the said tweet that fired up this whole case, she compared her period blood to the bloodshed by the 249 martyrs in a Turkish coup.
She tweeted, “I am having my period this morning to celebrate the July 15 martyrs’ day. I am celebrating the day by bleeding on behalf of our martyrs’ blood.” This tweet didn’t go down well with the Miss World Turkey organization and they dethroned her after much evaluation of her tweet.
She apologized for the tweet later calling her tweet “careless” and also cleared that her tweet didn’t hold any political resemblance.
It remains a debatable issue whether a beauty pageant contestant should be facing such extreme actions because of her ideas and views about certain aspects of society. Considering that she is a citizen of Turkey, ideally, she should have a right to express her thoughts freely. Now only time can tell what destiny holds for this young woman and whether her actions are justified or not.