A court in Istanbul has found comedian Deniz Göktaş guilty on two of three charges, including insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but ordered his release pending judicial review and appeal.
The judge provisionally sentenced the 32-year-old to 19 months in prison, but did not specify whether the sentence would involve immediate custody. Göktaş has already spent nearly three months in pre‑trial detention, which should count as time served.
Göktaş was arrested in July after posting a video of a June stand‑up performance on YouTube that attracted more than nine million views. Prosecutors had accused him of insulting Mr Erdoğan, inciting hatred and hostility through jokes about Islam, and praising crime and criminals. They had sought a sentence of up to 12 years and said they received more than 500 requests to bring the case.
The court downgraded the charge of “inciting hatred and hostility” to the lesser offence of “insulting religious values” and cleared Göktaş of the accusation of praising criminality.
Speaking in court, Göktaş told judges that his jokes were political commentary and not a crime. “Dictator is not an insult: it is a political characterisation,” he said, arguing that as leader of the party that has governed for 25 years, Mr Erdoğan is a legitimate subject for satire. He added that past presidents in Turkey had been “open to the art of satire” and that current leaders were increasingly unable to tolerate it.
Following his release, Göktaş said he was “very happy to be reunited” with his family but emphasised that many others remain behind bars: “There are thousands of other people in prisons across Turkey. Some, like me, are being held in pre‑trial detention, while others have been convicted because of their views.”
The trial comes amid a wider government crackdown on critics in Turkey, with politicians, artists and journalists among those who have recently faced detention or prosecution.
