Lawyer Efkan Bolaç, who shared cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s drawings on the 2014 Soma mine explosion and Berkin Elvan back when Erdoğan was prime minister appeared before a court on the charge of “insulting the President." The trial was postponed to 24 January 2023

CANSU PİŞKİN, ISTANBUL

The first hearing of the case filed against lawyer Efkan Bolaç on the charge of “insulting the President” for social media posts featuring cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s drawings on the 2014 Soma mine explosion and Berkin Elvan, a teenager who was killed after being hit by a gas canister fired by the police during the 2013 Gezi protests, was held at the İstanbul 52nd Criminal Court of First Instance on 6 September 2022.

Bolaç and his attorneys and the attorney representing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the hearing, which was monitored by P24. A large group of people were at the courtroom to follow the trial, including the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu, representatives of the Paris Bar and a representative of the London-based international freedom of expression organization Article 19.

Erdoğan was not president when the images were shared

Addressing the court, Bolaç’s attorney Kemal Aytaç made a statement on procedure. Aytaç said that while the cartoons subjected to the charge were shared on social media in 2014, the indictment put the date of the alleged crime as 2022 and added that in 2014 Erdoğan was not president.

Stating that the case had been filed in breach of legal procedure, Aytaç requested the immediate acquittal of his client. In requesting his client’s immediate acquittal, Aytaç said: “My client shared a cartoon with no writing. There is an allegation of insulting the President, but are there any insulting expressions in the cartoon that my client shared? No, there are none. Justice is not just for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it is for everyone. While people in this country who commit crime, corruption and theft go without facing investigation for months, a case has been filed over something shared eight years ago. My client is a lawyer. Has permission from the Ministry of Justice been obtained to put him on trial? No, it has not been. Not even that much has been done properly.”

The prosecutor, on the other hand, demanded that Aytaç’s request for acquittal be rejected due to the early stage of the case. Bolaç’s attorney Semra İşler Albayrak then spoke to remind the court that requests must be justified as per the Criminal Procedure Code (CMK) and asked the prosecutor to justify his request for rejecting acquittal.

The court rejected the request for immediate acquittal on the ground of the defendant’s inadequate defence.

“We are tired of the prosecution’s inattention and of fellow lawyers who have made a trade out of this”

Commenting on the charge he is facing, Bolaç said: “We are tired of the prosecution’s inattention and of fellow lawyers who have turned this into an industry. The administration has created an idol and demanded that everyone worship this idol. For those who would not worship it, they resorted to the police and the judiciary.”

Stating that the prosecutor’s office had begun an ex officio investigation despite no complaints being received about the cartoons that are subjected to the charge, Bolaç said “You are misusing Turkish Criminal Code (TCK) Article 299. The Article 299 is intended to protect an impartial president but Erdoğan is currently the chairperson of a political party. I got the cartoon by Carlos Latuff that is subjected to the charge from Hürriyet newspaper. The drawing is still on the website of the newspaper. It is also available at Cumhuriyet newspaper. These have neither been blocked nor been the subject of an investigation.”

Bolaç’s attorney Aytaç stated that the elements of the impugned crime did not exist. The prosecutor requested time to prepare the prosecution’s opinion as to the basis. The court accepted the prosecution’s request and postponed the trial to 24 January 2023.

About the case

The indictment on Bolaç relies on his social media posts as evidence. It claims that Bolaç’s Instagram posts featuring the drawings by Carlos Latuff on the Soma mining explosion and Berkin Elvan constitute the offense of “insulting the President.”

An investigation into Bolaç on suspicion of “publicly denigrating the Turkish nation, the Republic of Turkey and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Government of the Republic of Turkey and its judicial bodies” based on two posts on Twitter had ended with no grounds to prosecute upon the Ministry of Justice not giving permission for the trial of Bolaç.