Photographs of a celebrity kissing a bikini-clad woman other than his wife on a yacht off the resort town of Bodrum would normally be relegated to the back pages of Turkish newspapers. But when it emerged that the woman was his adult niece, Turkey was thrust into a painful debate about incest. Much of the ire has been directed at a journalist who wrote about the prevalence of incest within Turkish families.

In the mass-circulation daily Hurriyet, Melis Alphan cited research from the Federation of Women’s Associations of Turkey (TKDF) showing that 40% of Turks were victims of incest. The figure was based on a broad definition that includes both physical and non-physical behavior for purposes of sexual arousal by family members.

“Incest is a taboo and part of the problem is the lack of knowledge about it,” Alphan, who regularly writes about violence against women and children, told Al-Monitor. “I wrote about this because the issue goes beyond the tabloids, beyond merely judging the two people involved as if it has nothing to do with the rest of us.”

But Alphan’s story sparked outrage and she has faced threats over Twitter, she said. Some readers said they would press charges against her under the penal code’s notorious Article 301, which makes “insulting the Turkish nation” a prisonable offense.