Singer gets jail, MP faces ouster from Turkey Parliament for 'insulting Erdogan'

"Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is all empty, it is all a lie, one day life will end, and you will say all I had was but a dream," famous artist Zuhal Olcay sang.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish judicial authorities on Thursday sentenced singer Zuhal Olcay to 10 months in prison for “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as prosecutors launched a probe into Kurdish lawmaker Lezgin Botan over the same crime that could result in his removal from the Parliament.

The famed singer Olcay, also an actress, had changed the lyrics of one of her songs during a 2016 concert in Istanbul by substituting Erdogan’s name into it while making a hand gesture.

She rhymed the President’s name into her song Bosvermisim dunyayi (“I let go of the world”) that she was performing.

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is all empty, it is all a lie, one day life will end, and you will say all I had was but a dream,” she sang in Turkish.

Turkish singer and actress Zuhal Olcay. (Photo: DHA)
Turkish singer and actress Zuhal Olcay. (Photo: DHA)

Experts for an Istanbul court checked a video record of the performance which was tipped off to police by someone among the audience, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

She will have to go to jail if a higher court, which her lawyers applied for review, agrees that Olcay insulted Erdogan.

Prosecutors were asking for up to four years in prison for her.

The other case against “insulting” Erdogan came from the city of Van where Turkish prosecutors sought a warrant from the Justice Minister to formally charge Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Botan.

Once given permission, a judicial process will begin against the Kurdish city’s representative for what the state media said was a phone call to a television station during which he spoke against Erdogan.

“The content of Botan’s talk is impossible to be framed as the freedom to criticise,” prosecutors argued for the MP who is facing up to 40 years in other “terrorism” trials.

If found guilty by a court, the Turkish Parliament will remove him from his elected post.

HDP lawmaker Lezgin Botan talks to Kurdistan 24 about Turkey's invasion of the Afrin region in Syrian Kurdistan, Jan. 25, 2018. (Kurdistan 24)
HDP lawmaker Lezgin Botan talks to Kurdistan 24 about Turkey's invasion of the Afrin region in Syrian Kurdistan, Jan. 25, 2018. (Kurdistan 24)

He will be the second MP in Turkey’s history kicked out of the national assembly for insulting the head of the state.

The first such case was recorded last month when Botan’s fellow HDP lawmaker Ahmet Yildirim lost his seat after a court sentenced him to 14 months in prison for calling Erdogan “a shoddy emperor.”

Yildirim was also banned from politics and deprived of certain civic and custodial rights, another first in the modern history of the country.

Along with Yildirim, nine HDP MPs have been removed from the Parliament.

As of June 2017, the number of people under investigation for insulting Erdogan was 3,658.

School children, a former Miss Turkey, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and cartoonists were among the target of such cases.

Turkish authorities even went after citizens of other countries, as was the case with the German comedian Jan Bohmermann who deliberately used profane words about Erdogan.

Enes Kanter, a Turkish basketball player from the NBA’s New York Knicks, and a fierce critic of the Ankara government is also standing trial in absentia for insulting the President.

Kurdish-German soccer player Deniz Naki was detained last year for the same “crime.”

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany