Turkish prosecutors have launched an investigation into former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on suspicion of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in remarks that recently resurfaced on social media.
The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said Thursday it had opened an investigation after examining social media posts containing statements it considered potentially insulting to the president.
Davutoğlu, 67, is being investigated under Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which criminalizes insulting the president and carries a prison sentence of one to four years.
The remarks circulating online date back several years. The T24 news website reported in April 2022 that Davutoğlu made them while speaking with residents during a visit to the eastern province of Bingöl and posted a video of the exchange on Facebook on September 11, 2021.
The video recently resurfaced on social media amid renewed controversy over the wealth and business holdings of former prime minister Binali Yıldırım and his family.
Journalist Timur Soykan said claims were circulating in Ankara that Yıldırım had assets worth about €480 million and had come under pressure to relinquish some companies and bring money held abroad back to Turkey.
Yıldırım succeeded Davutoğlu as prime minister in 2016.
“If I hadn’t objected, I wouldn’t have lost the prime minister’s office. I would have sat there and added billions to my wealth like the prime minister who came after me, like the ministers who came after me,” Davutoğlu said in the video.
“I told them, ‘Don’t take illicit money.’ They did. They enriched those around them. He made his son-in-law a minister, enriched his relatives and handed Turkey over to five contractors,” he added.
Davutoğlu did not name Erdoğan in the remarks, although his reference to making a son-in-law a minister was an apparent reference to Erdoğan’s appointment of Berat Albayrak, who is married to his daughter Esra, as energy minister in 2015 and later as finance minister.
Davutoğlu’s mention of “five contractors” apparently referred to Cengiz Holding, Limak Holding, Kalyon Holding, Kolin Holding and Makyol, large construction groups that have secured major public infrastructure contracts during Erdoğan’s rule.
Opposition politicians, particularly Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who was reinstated as chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) by a court ruling in May, have frequently referred to the companies as the “gang of five,” accusing the government of favoring them in lucrative public tenders and public-private partnership projects.
The companies and the government have denied allegations of wrongdoing.
Davutoğlu was one of the most influential figures in Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) during its first decade in power.
An academic by training, he served as Erdoğan’s chief foreign policy adviser before becoming foreign minister in 2009. He was closely associated with Turkey’s “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy and his concept of “strategic depth.”
Davutoğlu became prime minister and AKP chairman in 2014 after Erdoğan was elected president but resigned from both posts in May 2016 following growing disagreements with Erdoğan over the management of the party and government.
He left the AKP in 2019 before the party could expel him and founded the Future (Gelecek) Party later that year as a conservative alternative to Erdoğan’s increasingly centralized rule.
The party struggled to establish a significant independent electoral base and performed poorly in the 2024 local elections.
Davutoğlu announced in July that he was withdrawing from party politics and ending the Future Party’s political activities, saying Turkey’s political system had reached an impasse marked by polarization, fragmentation and declining ethical standards.
The Future Party subsequently voted at an extraordinary congress on August 22 to dissolve itself.
Davutoğlu said at the time that his withdrawal was not a surrender but an effort to establish “a moral distance” from what he described as a contaminated political environment.
Article 299 has long been used to prosecute journalists, politicians, artists and ordinary social media users over remarks deemed insulting to Erdoğan.
A report found that cases involving alleged insults to Erdoğan accounted for 43.3 percent of 120 hearings monitored by the Media and Law Studies Association between January 2025 and May 2026, with journalists making up nearly two-thirds of defendants in cases involving insults to the president or public officials.
Human rights groups have long criticized Article 299, arguing that the provision is incompatible with freedom of expression and is used to punish criticism of Erdoğan.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
