An Istanbul court on Monday sentenced stand-up comedian Deniz Göktaş to just over 19 months in prison for jokes in a filmed show, then ordered him released pending appeal after 88 days in pre-trial detention.
The 14th Penal Court of First Instance gave him 11 months and 20 days for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and seven months and 15 days on a second count that the judge recast as insulting religious values, lighter than “inciting hatred and hostility” towards Islam.
He was acquitted of praising crime and criminals, a charge added later over a joke about an organised-crime family known as the Daltons.
The sentence is not final until an appeals court reviews it.
Until then he walks free.
Dozens of supporters had gathered outside the Çağlayan courthouse.
Observers from the Dutch embassy and the United States consulate were in court at the opening of the hearing.
Göktaş, 32, was arrested on July 3 after flying home, a week after a YouTube cut of his show Ölü Deniz (“Dead Sea”) spread online.
The recording drew millions of views.
Prosecutors pointed to lines about Erdoğan, the Koran and jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
The indictment listed his description of the president as a “shy dictator” who had completed “a transition to a dictator at peace with his own identity.”
He denied the charges. In court he said political satire that never named Erdoğan would have no meaning.
“Dictator is not an insult: it is a political characterisation,” Goktas said. “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.”
Goktas said that other presidents in Turkey have been open to the art of satire.
“I have been detained for 88 days because of four sentences I said during the show: 22 days for each sentence,” he told the bench.
“As a comedian, it is an honour to see the impact of my words, but it is worrying in terms of freedom of expression in Turkey.”
The night before the hearing he posted that after 88 days he would be handcuffed for the first time and hear a car horn. He was not going to miss the handcuffs.
Insulting the president is a criminal offence under Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code, punishable by one to four years, more if the remark is public.
Prosecutions under the article have run into the tens of thousands since Erdoğan became head of state.
Göktaş had performed versions of the same set for about three years, he said, to live audiences of more than 100,000, without the same complaints.
A 90-minute show, he wrote from Karatepe high-security prison, had spawned a new charge every two months.
Nominally, Turkey is a secular country with free speech. It is a NATO member state and wants to join the EU.
A man in Bavaria had his house raided by police after retweeting a meme mocking German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens party. https://t.co/pRdkEZl45k
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 14, 2024
