Journalist Ertuğrul Özkök is under investigation for "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after comparing his rule to Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced yesterday that it had launched an ex officio investigation into Özkök over his remarks made during a YouTube broadcast.
Appearing on journalist Bahar Feyzan’s channel on Jul 31, the 79-year-old argued that Turkey’s current political system had been built around Erdoğan’s personality and therefore could not survive beyond him:
“These days will pass. As a student, I witnessed firsthand how Franco’s regime collapsed in Spain. Franco’s 30-year dictatorship disappeared overnight. The regime changed the very night he died, the very night!
“No one should think regimes like this can continue forever. They cannot. Today’s regime in Turkey has been designed around Tayyip Erdoğan’s personality, and it functions only through his personality. There is no second person who could carry this regime forward in Turkey, and there cannot be for a long time.
“After all, our president is 72 years old. Seventy-two is not that old, he may have years ahead of him, but eventually age catches up with everyone. I know that because I’m living it myself.
“That’s why everyone needs to stop and think. I believe that if justice worked better in Turkey today, if human rights and meritocracy functioned properly, and if there were greater media freedom, President Erdoğan would actually have a much better chance of being re-elected.”
After clips from the interview circulated widely on social media, the prosecutor’s office announced yesterday that it had opened an ex officio investigation.
BIA Media Monitoring Reports
During the 1990s and 2000s, Özkök was one of the country’s most influential journalists as editor-in-chief of Hürriyet, then Turkey’s largest newspaper.
His prime years coincided with an era of unstable coalition governments in the 1990s, when political parties were weaker and the mainstream media wielded considerable influence over politics.
He stepped down as editor-in-chief of Hürriyet in 2009 but continued writing columns until 2021.
In a 2024 interview with journalist Hasan Basri Akdemir on his YouTube channel, Özkök admitted that "I'm not a dissident" and that "I made my career as a journalist who has been close to the ruling power."
'Insulting Erdoğan': Nearly 10,000 people stood trial in a year, including 290 children
AKP spokesperson denounces Özkök
Ömer Çelik, spokesperson for Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), criticized Özkök’s remarks in a written statement today, emphasizing that Erdoğan is a democratically elected leader:
“Comparing our president, one of the world’s leaders with the highest democratic legitimacy, to a dictator who committed crimes against humanity reflects intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
“We fought our democratic struggle against this mindset during the most difficult times, and we will continue to do so.
“This same mindset also claims that ‘there is no such party as the AK Party.’ That is nothing more than the wishful thinking of a decayed mentality. Anyone who wants to learn the truth should go out into the streets, say the same thing, and experience the response firsthand.
“These rotten statements are null and void.” (VK)
