Turkey’s litigious president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continued his campaign against the opposition with over 16,000 individuals being prosecuted in 2022 for “insulting the President” and “denigrating the government”, the BirGün daily reported on Sunday.
These charges, which fall under Articles 299 and 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, respectively, have been widely criticised by human rights defenders as the biggest obstacle to the freedom of expression, and an effort by the Turkish government to silence dissent and prosecute citizens.
The Ministry of Justice’s annual statistics revealed that a total of 16,753 people were prosecuted under these articles in 2022, the highest rate since Turkey’s new presidential system entered into force in 2018, BirGün said.
Statistics show that last year, 7,600 new cases were inititated citing those articles, with 7,712 defendants and 8,071 charges. Of those tried, 1,872 were convicted, 3,135 were given suspended sentences and 2,226 were acquitted.
The previous year, 2021, 48,069 people were investigated for insulting the president and the government.
In October 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Article 299, which covers “insulting the president” is incompatible with the right to freedom of expression, and called on the government to bring the legislation in line with the European norms.
