Hüseyin Kocabıyık, a former lawmaker from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), is facing a lawsuit seeking non-pecuniary damages over his alleged insults of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Kocabıyık said in a post on X that the lawsuit seeks 400,000 lira (around $9,100) in compensation. He criticized the case, writing, “Apparently they are strengthening the home front. What a turn of events…”
Kocabıyık was sentenced in December 2025 to more than two years in prison for insulting Erdoğan. He spent 72 days in pretrial detention awaiting the ruling of the court before being released under an international travel ban.
The sentence was not immediately enforced due to the time he spent in pretrial detention and the possibility of appeal.
He was taken into custody in October 2025 after the Cumhuriyet daily published an interview in which he described the ruling AKP as a network of favoritism and patronage that rewards loyalty while leaving little room for dissent.
He was expelled from the AKP in 2025 after sharply criticizing the detention of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, calling it “a coup” staged by President Erdoğan against himself.
İmamoğlu, widely seen as President Erdoğan’s strongest political rival, was arrested in March 2025 on corruption charges that critics say are politically motivated and intended to sideline him ahead of the 2028 general election.
Under Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code, insulting the president is a criminal offense in Turkey. The law has been criticized by human rights and press freedom advocates, who say it is used to prosecute journalists, politicians and ordinary citizens for expressing critical views of the president or even satirizing him indirectly.
In 2021 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the law should be amended or repealed, stating that giving special protection to the president stifles public debate and chills dissent. International human rights organizations have also repeatedly urged the Turkish government to review the law, which they describe as incompatible with democratic norms and international free speech standards.
