Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he co-founded in 2001. He also served as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998.
Lèse-majesté or lese-majesty is an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling head of state or of the state itself. The English name for this crime is a modernised borrowing from the medieval French, where the phrase meant 'a crime against the Crown'. In classical Latin, laesa māiestās meant 'hurt/violated majesty' or 'injured sovereignty'.
Human rights in Turkey are protected by a variety of international law treaties, which take precedence over domestic legislation, according to Article 90 of the 1982 Constitution. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was not signed by Turkey until 2000. As of today, however, Turkey is party to 16 out of 18 international human rights treaties of the United Nations. The issue of human rights is of high importance for the negotiations with the European Union (EU).
Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right, religion, politics and culture.
Can Dündar is a Turkish journalist, columnist and documentarian. Editor-in-chief of center-left Cumhuriyet newspaper until August 2016, he was arrested in November 2015 after his newspaper published footage showing the State Intelligence MİT sending weapons to Syrian Islamist fighters.
Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
Operation Sledgehammer is the name of an alleged Turkish secularist military coup plan dating back to 2003, in response to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) gaining office.
The foreign policy of the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government concerns the policy initiatives made by Turkey towards other states under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during his tenure as prime minister from 2003 to 2014.
Barış Pehlivan is a Turkish journalist and author. He is known for his investigative news and books on Turkish politics. He has been sued many times for his journalistic activities. He was imprisoned in 2011, 2020 and 2023 as part of these cases.
The 2013 Reyhanlı car bombings took place on 11 May 2013, when two car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanlı, a town of 64,000 people, 5 km from the Syrian border and the busiest land border post with Syria, in Hatay Province, Turkey. At least 52 people were killed and 140 injured in the attack.
Mahir Zeynalov is a Washington D.C.-based journalist, entrepreneur and a press freedom advocate. Zeynalov is currently the CEO of Globe Post Media, a columnist for Al Arabiya and writing for Huffington Post. He rose to international prominence for documenting the massive crackdown on journalists and he is best known for his works on authoritarian regimes. His work on Turkey is closely followed in the West. He is also a serial entrepreneur, owns marketing agencies, a technology firm, a publication house and a creative design and branding agency.
The March for Justice was a 450 km (280-mile) march from Ankara to Istanbul to protest against arrests that were made as part of the government crackdown following the July 2016 coup d'état attempt. After the coup attempt, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government declared a state of emergency. Since then at least 50,000 people have been arrested and another 140,000 people have been removed from their positions. The protest was led by opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, in response to a lengthy prison sentence that Enis Berberoğlu received for allegedly giving the press a video that shows Turkish intelligence smuggling weapons into Syria. The march concluded in Istanbul on 9 July with a rally attended by hundreds of thousands of people, during which Kılıçdaroğlu spoke at length about the effect that the government purge has had on the judiciary and rule of law in Turkey.
The presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the oath of office on 28 August 2014 and became the 12th president of Turkey. He administered the new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's oath on 29 August. When asked about his lower-than-expected 51.79% share of the vote, he allegedly responded, "there were even those who did not like the Prophet. I, however, won 52%." Assuming the role of president, Erdoğan was criticized for openly stating that he would not maintain the tradition of presidential neutrality. Erdoğan has also stated his intention to pursue a more active role as president, such as utilising the President's rarely used cabinet-calling powers. The political opposition has argued that Erdoğan will continue to pursue his own political agenda, controlling the government, while his new prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu would be docile and submissive. Furthermore, the domination of loyal Erdoğan supporters in Davutoğlu's cabinet fuelled speculation that Erdoğan intended to exercise substantial control over the government.
Pelin Ünker is a Turkish journalist and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In the late 2010s she investigated the Turkish dimension of the Paradise Papers affair.
Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code is a lèse-majesté law deems it illegal to "Insult the President of Turkey". A person who is sentenced for a violation of this article can be sentenced to a prison term between one and four years and if the violation was made in public the verdict can be elevated by a sixth. Prosecutions often target critics of the government, independent journalists, and political cartoonists. Between 2014 and 2019, 128,872 investigations were launched for this offense and prosecutors opened 27,717 criminal cases. Turkey's article 299 and article 125, which allows one party to sue for insult despite lack of sufficient evidence, are arguably used as part of SLAPPs.
Kalem was a bilingual weekly political satire magazine which was in circulation in the period 1908–1911 in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. The magazine was one of the satirical publications which were started immediately after the end of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid's strict rule. It was published in Turkish and French languages and was one of the most notable satirical magazines in the Empire in terms of the quality cartoons. In addition, it is the first Ottoman publication which employed the word cartoon and attempted to develop a definition for it.
Sedef Kabaş is a Turkish journalist and television presenter who has presented on various news channels in Turkey since 1997. In January 2022, she received international attention after she was arrested following a television interview in which she was alleged to have insulted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Ceyda Sungur, also known as Kırmızılı Kadın, is a Turkish academic and activist.
