Journalist Fatih Altayli receives hefty jail sentence over remarks he made on his YouTube channel – which a court ruled threatened the President.
A court in Istanbul on Wednesday jailed the veteran journalist Fatih Altayli for four years and two months for “threating the President” over remarks he made on his YouTube channel.
“There is nothing the President [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] would fear or interpret as a threat in my remarks. I don’t have such influence. I am just a citizen standing before you,” Altayli told the court, seeking his acquittal. The court dismissed the request and ruled that he would stay in prison due to “risk of flight”. He has been in prison since June 22. A court in Istanbul blocked Altayli’s YouTube Channel in order to “protect national security and public order” and “prevent crimes”, it said.
In comments on his channel, he told his viewers: “Look at the history of this nation … this is a nation which strangled its Sultan when they didn’t like him or want him. Quite a few Ottoman Sultans were assassinated, strangled, or their deaths were made to look like suicide.”
Altayli’s daily commentaries on YouTube attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers and he was the most-watched journalist on YouTube by the time of his arrest. Born in 1962, the journalist and one-time television presenter quit traditional media in 2023 in order to start his own YouTube channel. Opposition parties, rights groups and journalistic organisations have repeatedly called on the government to release him.
The latest Press Freedom Index issued by the media watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, ranked Turkey in 159th place out of 180 countries in 2025. “We know this: in the current period, in cases where the President is the complainant, there is no possibility for anyone to be acquitted.” Sezgin Tanrikulu, an MP from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP, said following the court hearing.
Source: BalkanInsight
