Criminalising Dissent: Lèse-majesté and the Path to Autocracy

This book addresses one of the oldest political offences in the European continent, lèse-majesté, in light of its historical evolution and the threat it poses to a democratic public sphere in modern-day Europe. The Republic of Turkey, which serves as the focal point of this book, epitomises the “chilling” (ab)use of lèse-majesté laws due to the sheer number of criminal investigations on the basis of lèse-majesté as well as the relatively low threshold for permissible criticism in defamation...