Dubai: A court in Turkey’s southern province of Antalya has sentenced a 16-year-old boy to four years and six months in jail for kissing a 13-year-old girl in school.

“The expert report about the high school student A.K. has emphasised that he had undertaken this action with the impulse of puberty and that there was no need for punishment, but the prosecutor and judge did not take this into account,” Sevcan Aydın Uzun, the lawyer, told Turkish daily Hürriyet.

“Following the trial process, A.K. was given the sentence on charges of sexual assault.”

According to the case documents, A.K. and S.Ö. hugged and kissed on the latter's school premises.

The case reached the judiciary after A, a schoolmate of S.Ö., took a video of the incident and shared it with friends.

Once the video was seen by the school administration, a lawsuit was filed at the Antalya Heavy Penalty Court against A.K. for “sexual assault” and A. for “using children in the production of inappropriate images.”

Four children who were sent the relevant video stood trial on charges of “sharing inappropriate images in which children were used.”

In its ruling on Friday, the Antalya court sentenced only A.K. and acquitted the other five children, including the one who filmed the video.