A Turkish comedian was convicted in Istanbul on Monday on charges of "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and "insulting religious values" during a stand-up performance in June. The judge provisionally sentenced Deniz Goktas to 19 months in prison, but ordered his release pending the judicial review and appeal process that would finalized the verdict. It was not immediately clear how long this process might take.
NATO member and EU aspirant Turkey routinely tries people on speech-related offenses, particularly and famously when it comes to supposed "insults" of its longserving leader Erdogan. Deniz Goktas, 32, was arrested on July 3, a week after releasing a YouTube video of his show that was watched nearly 9 million times and a few days after shorter clips he posted on X enjoyed similar rapid success. He faced an array of charges related to content in his "Dead Sea" show.
Goktas referred to his impending court appointment online on Sunday, in one of his irreverent social media posts from his cell. Goktas was accused of insulting Erdogan, of inciting public hatred and hostility — via jokes about Islam — and of praising crime and criminals, an additional charge added by prosecutors tied to a joke about an organized crime family, the Daltons His trial is the latest in a widening crackdown on people seen as critical of Turkey's moderate Islamist government. Hundreds of politicians, artists, musicians, journalists and LGBTQ activists are among those to face detention or trial.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Goktas did not dispute the content from his popular show, but did argue in court that he had committed no crimes with his jokes. Prosecutors had for instance singled out a pair of references he made to President Erdogan as a "dictator" as illegal insults. "Dictator is not an insult: it is a political characterization," Goktas told the court.
"As the president and leader of the party that has ruled the country for 25 years, a political comedy show in which Erdogan's name is never mentioned would be neither sincere nor have any connection to reality." He said that Erdogan should be "open to the art of satire," as he said past presidents in Turkish democracy were. "The joke hasn't changed. What has changed is the increasingly fragile leadership that can no longer tolerate the joke," he said.
The judge nevertheless convicted Gotkas of insulting Erdogan, and downgraded the charge he faced of "inciting hatred and hostility" with jokes about Islam, instead convicting him of the lesser supposed crime of "insulting religious values." He cleared the comedian of the third charge of allegedly praising criminality. Goktas has spent just under three months in pretrial detention, which should count as time served in any potential custodial sentence. According to the Turkish NGO the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), prosecutors cited more than 500 applications to prosecute the performer regarding the show.
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