Turkish prosecutors have filed an indictment demanding prison sentences of up to four-and-a-half years for a YouTube program host and his guest, who were arrested earlier this week over a joke accused of mocking a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, Turkish Minute reported on Friday.
The indictment, submitted to the İstanbul Criminal Court of First Instance, accuses the two men, host Boğaç Soydemir and his guest Enes Akgündüz, of “inciting hatred and enmity or insulting a segment of the public” under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
The indictment follows their detention on September 23 after prosecutors launched an investigation into a segment of the show “Soğuk Savaş” (Cold War) in which Soydemir read out a viewer-submitted joke playing on the phrase “Alcohol is the mother of all evils,” commonly cited as a hadith, or saying, of the Prophet. The punchline added a sexual pun that critics said amounted to an insult of Muhammad.
Soydemir later issued a public apology on social media, saying he had no intention of insulting religious values and that he first saw the joke while on the program. “I thought it was just wordplay, but I should have reflected on it more,” he wrote, adding that the clip was removed after the broadcast.
The YouTubers were detained on orders from prosecutors and, after giving statements, were arrested by a court.
Soydemir, known online by the username “Educatedear,” is a social media influencer. Like Soydemir, Enes Akgündüz is also a well-known content creator.
“Soğuk Savaş” has around 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
Turkey is a predominantly Muslim but officially secular country, though authorities frequently pursue cases against public figures over comments about Islam, Islamic law or the Prophet.
In a similar development earlier in the summer, five staff members of the LeMan satirical magazine were arrested over a cartoon in its June 26 issue that allegedly insulted religious values by depicting the prophets Muhammad and Moses. Four of them were released under judicial supervision by a court on Friday.
In recent years Turkey has tightened control over digital platforms through laws expanding state oversight of online content. Authorities regularly block access to websites, investigate social media posts and sanction platforms for failing to comply with content removal orders.
Turkey was ranked the lowest-scoring country in Europe for online freedoms, according to a report from the Washington-based Freedom House last October. Turkey has a score of 31 in a 100-point index, with scores based on a scale of 0 (least free) to 100 (most free) and is listed as “not free.”
