A Turkish court has handed down a two-year suspended sentence to journalist Furkan Karabay due to comments he made about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his children during an interview on a YouTube program last year.
Karabay was convicted on Friday by İstanbul’s 56th Criminal Court of First Instance of charges of “insulting the president” and “slander” following a criminal complaint filed by Erdoğan and his children Bilal, Ahmet and Sümeyye. The court sentenced him to 11 months, 20 days for insulting the president and an additional one year, 10 days for slander.
Although the court found Karabay guilty, he will not serve time in prison unless he commits a similar offense within the next five years since his sentence has been suspended. He was acquitted of a separate charge of general insult.
Karabay was defiant during Friday’s hearing, saying he has no expectation from the courts at the İstanbul Courthouse “where unlawfulness occurs every minute.”
Charges based on claims of offshore wealth
The charges against Karabay, filed by an İstanbul prosecutor last September, stem from his comments during a YouTube interview with journalist Mirgün Cabas in January 2024.
In the interview Karabay talked about claims, first raised by former main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in 2017, in relation to offshore accounts allegedly held by members of Erdoğan’s family in the Isle of Man, a tax haven in the Irish Sea.
Kılıçdaroğlu claimed that relatives of Erdoğan sent money amounting to $18 million to an offshore company based on the Isle of Man. He produced SWIFT codes and bank receipts to back up his claims.
Erdoğan denied the allegations at the time, saying, “Not a single penny has gone abroad,” and that the allegations were a “lie.” He proceeded to file a lawsuit against Kılıçdaroğlu.
The authenticity of the documents was confirmed by the country’s Supreme Court of Appeals when it annulled the damages in two lawsuits filed by Erdoğan against Kılıçdaroğlu and ordered a reduction of damages in a third lawsuit in 2022.
The conviction of Karabay, who frequently faces legal harassment due to his journalistic activities, adds to growing international concern over press freedom in Turkey, where journalists routinely face legal pressure over reporting or commentary deemed critical of the government. Rights organizations have criticized the widespread use of defamation laws to silence dissent.
RSF ranked Turkey 158th out of 180 countries in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index.
Critics accuse Erdoğan of establishing one-man rule in the country by jailing his critics and silencing opposition media.