Evrensel newspaper Editor-in-Chief Fatih Polat has been charged with “insulting the president” for republishing an article on alleged secret business dealings of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s family.

Polat republished the article “Turkish President Erdoğan's family in secret offshore ship deal” that was first published on the blacksea.eu website on 26 May 2017 as part of what came to be known as the Malta Files, an international investigative journalism initiative. The article, written by British journalist Craig Shaw, how two businessmen close to the president paid $25 million for an oil tanker secretly owned by the family's offshore company. Polat republished the entire text of the article in his column in Evrensel, titled “What does the Erdogan family say about these allegations?”