The Saudi news network al-Arabiya cited official Justice Ministry statistics Sunday to reveal nearly 1,000 children in Turkey between 2014 and 2020 have suffered prosecution on charges of “insulting the president,” a crime in Turkish law.
Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has regularly used “insulting the president” accusations to persecute dissidents and civilians overheard mocking or criticizing his rule, both filing criminal charges and civil charges meant to bankrupt defendants. Turkey’s penal code criminalizes several forms of speech — including insults towards the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who Erdogan has disparaged with impunity.
Al-Arabiya reported that 903 Turkish minors went to trial over allegations they had insulted Erdogan. The youngest to be prosecuted were 12 years old; 264 of those prosecuted were between the ages of 12 and 14.
Including adults, Turkish processed over 11,000 cases on charges of “insulting the president” in 2019.
“Justice Ministry statistics showed that criminal cases were launched for 27,717 of the 128,872 probes in six years, and in 31,109 cases, prosecutors decided to not lodge charges,” the Saudi news agency noted. “A total of 9,556 individuals have been convicted, usually for social media posts, and 2,676 people were handed prison sentences, out of which seven are children, including one between the ages of 12 and 14. Some 4,325 individuals were acquitted.”
According to Turkish Minute, an English-language outlet critical of Erdogan, most criminal charges for “insulting the president” are the product of social media posts questioning Erdogan’s leadership. Some prominent cases also feature artists performing songs or poems that appear to be critical of Erdogan.
Turkish Penal Code Article 299 states that those convicted of “insulting the president of the republic” may be imprisoned for between one to four years, and may have an increase of one-sixth of the prison time ruled if the “offense is committed in public.”
Following the failed coup against him in 2016, Erdogan dramatically announced that he would issue a blanket amnesty for those facing prosecution under Article 299 as a gesture of goodwill. The amnesty benefitted thousands of people, many of them journalists prosecuted simply for reporting news unfavorable to Erdogan and his party. He has since, however, again charged thousands under the provision.
After the 2016 coup, Erdogan’s Turkey received the distinction of being designated the world’s worst jailer of journalists by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in its annual global human rights review for three years in a row, only beginning to lose to China in 2019. Turkey also landed in second place after China in 2020, in part due to the extraordinary censorship and persecution of journalists that following the outbreak of Chinese coronavirus in the central city of Wuhan in the first half of the year.
During the most intense period of journalist persecution, Erdogan ordered raids on outlets that had questioned his ruling policies. In less than a month after the failed coup, Erdogan shut down 131 media outlets. Some of the country’s most prominent outlets — such as the newspapers Zaman and Hurriyet, continue to exist but under new, pro-Erdogan management that echoes the state news agency, Anadolu.
Among the most prominent cases of “insulting the president” prosecution occurred in 2015 when a doctor named Bilgin Ciftci shared a meme that compared Erdogan to Gollum, a character from the Lords of the Rings book series. The meme featured comparable photos of Erdogan and the Gollum character in the film versions of Lord of the Rings.
Ciftci faced two years in prison for insulting the president, which resulted in extensive litigation debating Gollum’s moral merits to determine if the comparison was, in fact, insulting. The Turkish court system hauled “two academics, two psychologists, and one movie expert” into court to discuss if Gollum was a good or evil character.
Ciftci was ultimately acquitted but others who shared the meme were sentenced to jail time.
In a more recent case, Zuhal Olcay, a Turkish singer, changed the lyrics of a hit song during a live performance to “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it’s all empty, it’s all a lie, life will end one day and you’ll say ‘I had a dream,'” which resulted in a ten-month prison sentence.
More powerful people who have publicly criticized Erdogan have faced large fines and civil punishments. In 2017, Erdogan personally sued a spokesman for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Bülent Tezcan, for calling Erdogan a “fascist dictator.”
“There are AK Party ministers, MPs from the AK Party, mayors of the AK Party, who are uncomfortable with this fascist dictatorship created in Turkey,” Tezcan said at the time. The AK Party, or Justice and Development Party, is Erdogan’s Islamist political party.
Erdogan sought $13,000 in damages for the comment.
“Bulent Tezcan’s rhetoric of hatred is a badge of shame for the main opposition. This is not politics, but rather hostility towards the nation’s will,” Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said at the time.
A year before that incident, Erdogan sued Tezcan’s boss, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, for calling Erdogan a “sham dictator.”
The legal action against CHP members has not ceased. In March, Erdogan sued CHP lawmaker Engin Özkoç for calling Erdogan “dishonorable, ignoble, low and treacherous.”
Like the CHP, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) — a left-leaning, pro-Kurdish party — has faced significant legal action for criticizing Erdogan. Unlike the CHP, Erdogan arrested both co-chairs of the HDP, Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş. Demirtaş ran for president against Erdogan behind bars in 2018.