Defense Statement

I was brought here from Çorlu Karatepe High-Security Penitentiary. Karatepe High-Security Prison is what is commonly known as a “pit-type” prison. From July 3 until the day of this hearing, I have spent my days in a cell that receives no sunlight, unable to communicate with any other detainee or convicted prisoner. During this time, unlike in other prisons, I have been allowed to speak to my family on the phone for only ten minutes a week, on the grounds of high security.

Today is September 28. Eighty-eight days have passed since July 3. I have been held in pretrial detention for 88 days because of four sentences I said as a comedian, in my capacity as a comedian, during my stand-up show at the Harbiye Cemil Topuzlu Open-Air Theater. I have been held in this high-security cell for 22 days per sentence. And those are minimum figures, mind you. Let us say 22 days per sentence—for now.

Of course, as a comedian, seeing that sentences can have such a powerful impact makes me proud. But as a citizen, I am saddened by my country’s record on freedom of expression.

What has happened to me has strengthened my faith in my work. Once I regain my freedom, I will continue doing it with even greater enthusiasm and confidence. My only concern is that this case will discourage people who take to the stage and push them toward greater self-censorship. I hope everyone who writes, draws, or creates will focus on the glass being half full: every sentence we utter carries greater potential than we realize.

If we asked someone unfamiliar with this case to guess what four sentences could warrant 88 days in solitary confinement in 2026, we would probably get answers such as a call for a massacre by someone having a violent breakdown, a hate crime, or harassment. Yet the sentences at issue in this case are nothing more than jokes told during a stand-up show—jokes that drew applause and laughter from the audience and were not even rude. Before the video of my show, Ölü Deniz (“Dead Sea”), I had said those four sentences cited as grounds for my detention onstage 197 times. I still stand by my jokes, because my words do not contain the slightest element of a crime.

I would like to explain something about being a comedian and about stand-up videos: we work in the reverse order of the album-release-and-concert system in music. Musicians first record an album and release it, and then sing those songs with their audiences. Because when we go to a concert, we want to hear songs we know and sing along with the musician. While familiarity and knowing the songs are advantages in music, surprise and misdirection are essential in comedy. Comedians first perform their shows live in front of audiences for years, and then record them at the end of their tours. In other words, the 90-minute video of my show that is the subject of this case is the final performance of material that had been tested live before more than 100,000 audience members over three years.

I first performed the show released under the title Ölü Deniz, in exactly the same form and with exactly the same sentences, at Harbiye in October 2023. I performed it for the last time, again at Harbiye, in June 2026. So, between the first show and the last, I said these four sentences that are the subject of this case 198 times, before more than 100,000 ticket-holding audience members all over Turkey. Every time, they were met with laughter and applause.

The number of complaints received over those three years about these sentences, each worth 22 days in solitary confinement: zero. In Samsun, Edirne, Mersin, Muğla, Çanakkale, Diyarbakır, Hatay, Trabzon, Adana, Çorlu, and Artvin, thousands of people did not see a sentence that warranted sending me to prison. These performances took place in each city’s largest and best-known venues. All my shows were publicized through posters and advertising. Far from complaining, audience members from every section of society were kind enough to recommend the show to their friends and loved ones. They came to the same show again and again with their parents, children, and partners. Thanks to them, Ölü Deniz played to sold-out audiences for three years, including two Harbiye shows with audiences of 5,000. The only complaint I heard during those three years was that people had difficulty finding tickets. And that was because the tickets sold out quickly. As I explained a moment ago, at the end of those three years, I recorded the show where it had begun, at the Harbiye Cemil Topuzlu Open-Air Theater, on the evening of June 1, 2026. Twenty-three days after the recording, on June 24, 2026, I released the 90-minute video on YouTube, and events unfolded.

I had released my first show, Selam Selam (“Hello, Hello”), on YouTube in 2023 as well, and it received six million views. So I expected this show to attract attention too, but it really attracted far more attention than I had anticipated. Within three days, millions of people had watched and shared it; broadcasts discussed it, and columns were written about it. But as we all know, trolls determine what gets attention on social media, and when something beyond their control and not to their liking becomes the topic of conversation, they begin attacking it through accounts they use for coordinated operations. The first post I saw from this troll team was the dictator joke that became the subject of the charge of “insulting the president,” shared by a troll account with a large following using the username Şamil Tayyar. They did not get the reaction they expected. On the second day, they shared part of the İmamoğlu joke and tried to turn off the people who had embraced the show. But that did not get the reaction they expected either. Users who appeared to be part of the same troll team were pleading with their teammates: “Let’s go after the parts about religion!” And on the third day, they cut off the beginning and end of the joke that became the subject of the investigation, cherry-picked it, took it out of context, and shared it simultaneously from hundreds of accounts under the heading “Comedian Who Denigrates Religious Values.” They also launched a campaign to file complaints with CİMER, the Presidential Communication Center. This was certainly not an organic response. That it was not organic can be demonstrated through even a simple review of the posts.

They showed this through the false reports they put out the next day. First, those same accounts wrote that I had fled abroad. Then they wrote that the entire process surrounding the show had been part of my plan to seek asylum. Yet I released the show on June 24, and on June 22 I had paid the fee for paid military service—almost half a million Turkish lira—to do my military service in 2027. I have never had any plan to live outside Turkey.

Every year, as soon as my tour ends, I go abroad on vacation to visit my friends. Right now, we can divide people between the ages of 20 and 35 into three categories. One: those who have moved abroad. Two: those trying to move abroad. Three: those trying to talk them out of it so they will not be left alone in Turkey. I am in the third category. All my close friends emigrated because they saw no future for themselves in Turkey. Reading the reports saying “He fled abroad” with the friends I was trying to persuade to return to Turkey was tragicomic. The harder I try to stop the brain drain, the more Turkey gets in my way. Now I will be trying to persuade them as a comedian who spent three months in prison because of a stand-up show. We submitted the false reports and manipulative posts about this entire process to the court. Immediately afterward, the news of an “investigation” broke. Before we had received any official information, I called my lawyer, Mr. Metin. “There is no arrest warrant, but you could come back,” he said. After that news, I cut my vacation short and boarded the first flight back to Turkey, just as I had left: with three T-shirts in my backpack.

After getting off the plane, I went to the passport police at the airport and said, “There may be an arrest warrant out for me.” We checked together and waited. A police officer came to collect me, and we walked together to the airport police station. On the way, I greeted people at the airport who recognized me and wished them a good trip. No one took me by the arm, and no one put me in handcuffs. The officers at the station were astonished: “Deniz, why did you come back? Are you crazy? I would never have come back,” they said. We waited for the inspector, laughing and joking. I was surprised that even the police wanted to leave the country.

The inspector arrived, and the first thing he said was, “Handcuff him.” I said, “I turned myself in. There is no reason to handcuff me.” He said this was mandatory procedure. I said, “I do not consent. You will have to force them on me, then.” At that, the inspector gave up, and they put me in a holding cell.

Some time later, an inspector arrived from the Security Branch at Vatan Police Headquarters and again said, “Handcuffs.” I said the same things. This time, the officers had been dressed in bright vests that were too tight for them. I realized they were going to put on a show for the cameras, and I said that I consented neither to being handcuffed nor to being filmed. They did it by force. Since this was the first time in my life I had tried to stop someone from handcuffing me, I managed to resist for about four seconds. In the end, I left the airport I had entered saying, “Well, I think there might be an arrest warrant out for me,” with my hands cuffed behind my back and my head pushed down. Congratulations to the police force: they had cornered and captured a crime machine armed with four sentences.

They filmed me from the front, the back, and the side, with my hands cuffed behind my back. In all of them, I raised my head, found the camera, and smiled. I knew they would publish the footage. Because they could not capture the ritual-of-humiliation image they wanted, they released a shot taken from a distance and from behind. Then, at Vatan Police Headquarters, I was taken from the officers’ room without air conditioning to the superior officers’ room with air conditioning, and from there down to the underground holding cells, packed to capacity and smelling of drugs. I am not exaggerating: every police officer was asking me why I had returned to Turkey. If they had the opportunities I had, they would not stay another minute. When we were children, parents used to say, “Become a civil servant and you’ll be set for life.” Now even civil servants dream of leaving Turkey. Why should I spend the rest of my life in exile because I made people laugh at Harbiye? It saddened me that people were so fed up with the country.

When the police officer responsible for protecting us pointed to the man next to me and said, “If this psychopath kills you in your sleep tonight, you’ll be trouble for us,” my attention shifted from the state of the country to my own situation. Some time later, they took me out again and brought me to forensic medicine. They took blood, urine, hair, and nail samples. Even though neither the indictment nor the investigation contained so much as a mention of drugs, I was subjected to a drug test with zero evidence, zero allegations, and zero concrete grounds. Eighty-eight days have passed, and we still do not know the result.

Having made it through that night at Vatan without being killed, I was brought to the Çağlayan Courthouse in the morning. I explained the jokes to a prosecutor who had not watched the show under investigation, or even the clips containing those sentences. After leaving the prosecutor’s questioning and while waiting in the courthouse corridor for the hearing, despite my saying firmly and clearly three times that I did not want to meet him, the inspector presented me with a fait accompli and made me meet Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. As if being handcuffed behind my back were not enough, I was also forced to meet Kılıçdaroğlu before the hearing. Kılıçdaroğlu said, “Why did you come back from abroad? Given the chance, I would not stay here another minute.” No. Unfortunately, he was the only person I spoke to throughout this process who did not say that. I did not want to meet him because I did not want to be used for publicity while I was in custody. When the meeting was forced on me, I spoke bluntly, firmly, and disapprovingly. They even denied what I had said in a conversation everyone had witnessed. The officers asked, “Why did you say, ‘Let go of the CHP’?” Why was I forced to meet Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu at the courthouse, with my hands in handcuffs, when I could not even see my lawyers? I still wonder.

The court before which I was subsequently brought ordered my pretrial detention on the grounds of suspected flight risk and the risk of tampering with evidence. Yet, despite having a talent visa granting residence and work authorization, which I had obtained to perform at the New York Comedy Festival, I had returned to Turkey as soon as I learned about the investigation.

Likewise, while the authorities were trying to suppress my show video—the subject of the case and its only piece of evidence—by blocking access to it, I personally shared it through my other social media accounts. Far from trying to conceal the evidence, I did everything I could to preserve it.

During my first week in my cell, I watched the video of me with my hands cuffed behind my back, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s stubborn denials of the sentence I had said to him, and the false reports about my father by the media outlets that had organized the CİMER campaign against me. It was very clear that religion was not this troll team’s concern. Their concern was to use religious sensitivities to intimidate every critical voice into silence.

For 88 days, I waited to appear at this hearing. It took 64 days to prepare an indictment concerning four sentences. As if that uncertain wait were not psychologically exhausting enough, I was also granted release and then detained again. On the 57th day, a Friday, I was rushed to SEGBİS, the court’s audiovisual-link system. As with the reviews of my detention, my lawyers had once again not been summoned. The judge who had ordered my detention was in front of me again. He said that, following an appeal, I had been granted release on both charges. He paused. After a brief silence, he said there was a request to detain me on a new charge. Two months after my detention, at the very moment I was granted release, a new offense had been discovered in a sentence I had said during the first five minutes of Ölü Deniz—the very same show. So, after the 30 seconds of freedom I experienced in the SEGBİS room, I was detained again for praising the Daltonlar gang.

Then, on Monday, I was detained again on the other two charges as well. While I was sitting alone in my cell watching MasterChef, I managed to be detained on three different charges within two working days. I feel that if the 61st Criminal Court of First Instance had never ordered my release, I would have ended up with fewer charges in total. And here I am, carrying both the ease of someone who was granted release on all charges 30 days ago and the anxiety of someone who was detained three more times the moment he was granted release.

The reason my mother and father have traveled from Ankara to Çorlu twelve times, just to see me through a pane of glass for only one hour a week, is the first of those four sentences, which I said about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “The transition from a shy dictator to a dictator who is comfortable with his own identity is a positive development for a person—provided we leave aside what happened to the rest of us.” And BAM! No sunlight for Deniz for 22 days.

The description “a shy dictator” was deemed an insult to the president, while the remarks “He’s definitely going to therapy” and “The last video of him laughing was in a cemetery” were also found offensive. The word “dictator” is not an insult; it is a political characterization. In another artistic work, someone might say “autocrat.” A comedian might say “democrat” in a show and get an even bigger laugh than I did. The words chosen can vary according to the writing and the artist’s style.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is also the chair of the AKP. As the country’s highest-ranking official and the leader of the party that has been in power for 25 years, he should be open to satire and humorous criticism, a tradition in this part of the world that goes back hundreds of years. The comparison to a “dictator” in the show is one frequently made, everywhere in the world, about leaders who display authoritarian tendencies.

The passage described as “laughing in a cemetery” refers to the video known as “Dear Musa,” in which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking to a reporter years ago, praised the work they had done in cemeteries. Because it is one of the rare recordings of the president laughing wholeheartedly, it is frequently shared and referenced on social media. So the remark in the show is a simple humorous observation rather than an offensive statement.

Therapy, meanwhile, is a form of psychological support that everyone should attend and benefit from, and it is a natural part of life. As someone who has been going to therapy for years and recommends it to everyone who has the means, I was not implying a psychological disorder. As a psychology graduate, there is no question of my using the act of going to therapy in a negative sense.

The indictment discusses social values and the need to protect them. Humor and satire, too, are values in this part of the world with histories stretching back centuries. Although the phrase “We are the descendants of Nasreddin Hoca” is often repeated, when the subject is something we do not want to hear, humor is obstructed or treated as entertainment that deserves punishment. Yet if a joke bothers you, the penalties you can impose are clear and quite sufficient. If you dislike a comedian, you do not laugh, you leave their shows without an audience, and you criticize their jokes or their writing just as sharply. But censorship, bans, and detention should have no place among the penalties imposed on someone who takes to the stage. This climate of censorship and prohibition, this fear of being detained, is troubling not only for artists and their work but also for every citizen. Politicians, like all public figures, must withstand such criticism.

Throughout the first page of the indictment, the investigating prosecutor quotes extensively from the constitutional provisions protecting freedom of expression and from the provision of the Turkish Penal Code defining the limits of the offense of insult. Even according to the passages quoted in the indictment, a comedian saying “dictator” during a stand-up show does not contain any element of a crime. In fact, someone like me, who is not a lawyer, does not need this information to understand that. Because anyone who is not encountering political humor and satire for the first time knows that the level of criticism in this joke is very mild and gentle. As a child, I grew up watching Levent Kırca on television and reading humor magazines. I watched Ferhan Şensoy’s plays; I looked through bound volumes of Gırgır in the archives and watched the productions of Devekuşu Kabare. If those masters had watched me, they might have said, “You’re too mild-mannered for a comedian,” and thought me timid. But in their time, such criticism was regarded as normal by society and those in power. Even if their works were criticized, they did not become matters for the judiciary. Yet the laws in question were the same then as they are today. Political humor that would have been considered mild back then now lands a comedian in a prison cell. The laws have not changed. What has changed? Those in power.

From Nasreddin Hoca through the Republican era, the works and legends of dozens of satirists are still remembered; even the names of the rulers they criticized are recalled through those critical works. Above all Ferhan Şensoy, who made me love the Turkish language and humor, but also Sabahattin Ali, Rıfat Ilgaz, and Aziz Nesin; the humor magazines Markopaşa, Diyojen, Akbaba, Gırgır, Leman, Penguen, and Uykusuz—all have secured a more lasting place in this society’s memory and culture than most politicians. While the people Ferhan Şensoy criticized and those who tried to censor him have long since been forgotten, there are people even among the youngest generations who know his plays by heart.

The judiciary must protect satire, political humor, this social value, and comedians who stand alone both onstage and in life, against powerful people offended by their jokes and against angry crowds. It must help create an environment in which this critical culture, a value of these lands for centuries, can be practiced freely.

If political humor is not outright banned in today’s Turkey, then there is no element of a crime in this joke. Because a political comedy show that does not mention President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the ruling party that has governed the country for 25 years, would have neither sincerity nor any connection to reality. As we know from Pertev Naili Boratav’s collection, Nasreddin Hoca did not mince his words before authority. If he were doing stand-up today, half his show would be about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

From the practice of handcuffing people behind their backs that I have described, to young people emigrating, civil servants dreaming of emigrating, artists’ self-censorship, and economic conditions: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is primarily responsible for, answerable on, or obliged to resolve every issue in Turkey that can be criticized or joked about. Naturally, being more aware of this responsibility than any of us, he should respond maturely to criticism and jokes about him.

Despite that, in this 90-minute stand-up show, in which I discuss dozens of different subjects and people relating to Turkey and current affairs, a mere five minutes are about him, and one sentence from those five minutes became the subject of the indictment.

Despite his many statements along the lines of “If I were a dictator, you would not be able to call me a dictator,” the fact that he is a leader who files a complaint against a comedian for calling him “a shy dictator” in a joke, and deprives that comedian of his freedom for 22 days per sentence, will also be criticized. I had no intention whatsoever to insult him. I request my acquittal.

The remaining three sentences were considered under “denigrating religious values,” and later cited as grounds for my detention on the charge of “inciting the public to hatred and hostility.” As proof that these three sentences, which were used to justify my spending 66 days in a cell, had incited the public to hatred and hostility, the prosecution cited 185 CİMER complaints. On July 3, the day I was detained, more than 100,000 people had watched Ölü Deniz live; on YouTube, it had six million views, 100,000 likes, and more than 20,000 positive comments. All that on one side, and 185 CİMER complaints on the other.

Those 185 CİMER complaints that were processed are in the case file. Since I had plenty of time in my cell, I looked through all of them. The show is posted on June 24, it becomes a major topic online and in the media for three days, and it gets roughly four million views in those three days. Guess how many CİMER complaints come in during those three days? Just one. And that one is not about religious subjects; it is about the president. As I explained at the beginning, this is manufactured outrage that began when the trolls, whose attacks had failed for three days, said, “Let’s go after the religious subjects.” The public has no complaint. We can see this from both the dates of the complaints and the images attached to them. The overwhelming majority of complainants had not watched my show. They came from truncated, manipulative video clips circulated by social media accounts used for coordinated attacks, with captions such as “Disgusting comedian insults our religion.” We submitted to the court the screenshots in the CİMER complaints that demonstrate this. But they do not stop at the video. Look, for example, there are many CİMER complaints from people who saw it on the “okadirmisiroglubey” page. In the screenshot, we can see the page saying, “Report this to CİMER. Don’t just tag someone and move on. Don’t take the easy way out.”

These complaints are not organic. This is an artificial campaign in which pages whose only relationship with art and humor is writing complaints cut and splice videos to direct their followers. Now imagine a scene: there is a religious preacher whose talks and ideas you like. A group of people who like him have created an Instagram page where they compile and share his talks. Along with 100,000 other people, you follow the page for those religious talks. Then, one evening, a post appears that is outside its normal style of content: a video headed “Report this bastard,” with “Complain to CİMER” written underneath. You watch the video. A young man with a mustache says things in a style you are not used to, and thousands of people laugh. Suppose you do not see an insult, but it grates on your ears. Do you listen to the page you like and go to CİMER, or do you become curious about what actually happened and go to YouTube? And despite all that effort and manipulation, only 185 complaints! Because there is nothing in these sentences that amounts to denigration or disrespect. Despite dozens of accounts with large followings targeting me, they managed to persuade only 185 people. On the other hand, we are talking about a political comedy show that has been viewed 15 million times, written about, and widely discussed. Even the most peaceful cartoon in the world would attract 185 complaints if it received that much attention in Turkey.

You must surely have examined the CİMER complaints in the case file. The accounts conducting this campaign are not accounts interested in art or following stand-up. They have never praised a work of art or even offered a negative critique. We all know these accounts: their only interactions with art and humor concern female artists’ clothing and calls for bans. Tomorrow they may call for concerts to be banned, and the next day for stand-up to be banned. They do not represent the public.

Indeed, while I was inside, I saw on television that the best-known of the newspapers targeting me had launched a campaign to “Abolish Coeducation.” I am sure that has passed 500 CİMER complaints. I hope coeducation is not abolished on their say-so, with the claim that “this is what the public wants.”

I looked through the complaints one by one to understand which expression had hurt the people complaining. One of the 185 complaints says, “He compares the Seljuk state to a salad.” There is no such charge in the indictment; I do not understand why the prosecution included it. Another person complained, “This individual’s Instagram follower count goes down by 100,000 and up by 200,000. Only a foreign lobby could be doing this,” and the prosecution accepted it as one of the 185 complaints. Perhaps these slipped in among the others; that can happen. Never mind the indictment—there is no such crime.

But there are two complaints that genuinely upset me, and I will quote them without the slightest exaggeration. Two people from the section of the public I supposedly incited to hatred and hostility asked for me to be executed. They are in the case file. “I want him deported or, if you will look into this matter, executed as soon as possible.” Another said, “Have him executed in a country that has the death penalty. Thank you.”

First of all, never mind me—no one can incite this citizen to hatred and hostility. He already has enough hatred for the entire Middle East. He has innovated in hatred: you are a country without the death penalty, but you have a comedian who needs executing; another country has the death penalty, but no criminal comedian. He is asking for the export of a comedian for execution. And beneath that complaint it says, “Your complaint has been accepted for processing.” The prosecution cites this CİMER complaint as a reference for saying, “The public was offended by Deniz.” Is this not appalling from a legal standpoint? Or does it only seem that way to me because I am the person concerned?

I do not believe I have in any way encouraged the public toward hatred as alleged in the charge. The idea that I could openly denigrate religious values while performing in huge venues from city to city is inconsistent with the ordinary course of life, and it is not credible. Are the 185 people on CİMER “the public,” but the 100,000 people who filled the venues to watch my show, the 20,000 who left positive comments, and the 15 million who watched the video not “the public”? But of course, let there be no misunderstanding: I am certainly not claiming that no one should be bothered by these two sentences. On the contrary, I understand. Religious belief is a red line for people; a person may prefer that these subjects not be addressed in a comedy show. That is, of course, their own choice. Even if no negative or derogatory word is used in the show, there may be unfamiliar turns of phrase. In that case, not watching and offering criticism are their most natural rights. But I reject the claims that there is any denigration or disrespect. No one can demonstrate it; all such claims are exaggerated and strained interpretations.

When Armağan was arguing with Eyyüp Can on MasterChef, he said, “I am responsible for what I say, Eyyüp Can, not for what you understand.” In that spirit, I will explain the sentences for which I am responsible.

First of all, the quotations in the indictment are highly incomplete and misleading. It is troubling that, in an accusation that could deprive someone of their freedom for years, the quotations begin halfway through sentences. In the joke, I list the things I am afraid of when I go outside: riot police, bus drivers who are fasting—the absence of this from the indictment can create a major misunderstanding—and suicide bombers, but most of all suicide bombers who are fasting. There is a simple play on words here. I really am afraid of these three things. The irritability of people who are fasting is well known. Just as, when I say “bus drivers who are fasting,” I am not claiming that people who fast are more likely or better suited to become bus drivers, when I say “suicide bombers who are fasting,” I am not implying or establishing any such connection either. It is simply a joke in which I combine losing one’s temper with blowing up. There is no intention or implication of denigrating religious values.

I will continue with another sentence that is the subject of the indictment. But I would like to say this: during those three years when I took Ölü Deniz from city to city and performed it for hundreds of thousands of ticket-holding audience members, if an audience member had told me they were hurt by something I presented onstage, of course I would have been upset.

In another of the relevant jokes quoted in the indictment, I say, “The fourth book is my favorite,” and “By far the best of the four books.” I am certainly not trying to belittle the holy book or the people who believe in it. As I said a moment ago, I think it is just as contrary to the ordinary course of life that I could tour from city to city, perform onstage while displaying such contempt for people’s religious values, and then repeatedly sell tickets and fill every subsequent show. I have absolutely no intention of denigrating a believer’s values. I ask that the meaning of my words be assessed together with the joke as a whole and its delivery onstage.

There is a spiritual guidance service in the prison. The religious official there knew who I was. He asked, “You’re a very good comedian, but why did you make that joke?” I said, “Sir, where is the disrespect?” He said that by using the word “author,” I had attributed a human characteristic to God. The use of “author” may be incorrect in terms of religious terminology, but it does not carry any negative, mocking, or derogatory meaning whatsoever. I had no such intention, and I found it strange that it was understood that way. As I have often repeated in this defense, Ölü Deniz is a stand-up show, an artistic work. It has no aim of providing religious instruction. The choice of words may be considered mistaken or unconventional, but that does not mean it is disrespectful or derogatory. There is only one negative statement in the entire joke: “The first three books were good; the translation of the fourth is weak.” Here, too, the reference is not to the holy book itself but to the discussions about renderings and translations of its meaning that I have heard for years.

Although the three sentences I have defended so far raise grave issues of freedom of expression, the debates around them are somewhat familiar and ones I expected. Can the president be criticized? What constitutes an insult? Can jokes be made about religious subjects? Is it disrespectful? What are the limits of freedom of expression? And so on. But the third sentence, about “divers,” which I will now discuss, is shocking both to me and to anyone who knows Turkish. Because here, I am being tried on the basis of the exact opposite of the meaning and criticism I explicitly expressed—even emphatically underlined. I had seen the reactions to the other three sentences on social media before I was taken into custody.

Before the prosecutor’s questioning, I had encountered this completely mistaken, 180-degree reversal of the meaning of the sentence about divers only once before: in Nagehan Alçı’s commentary. Since she suffers from mental retardation, I had not dwelled on it. But when I heard that sentence presented as an accusation during the prosecutor’s questioning on the day I was taken into custody, I was surprised and asked, “What is the accusation?” He said it was discrimination against people wearing haşema—full-coverage modest swimwear. He then said that he had not watched the show and had read it from the transcript. From that point until the indictment was prepared, I thought, “There must have been some confusion in the rush that day; it won’t make it into the indictment.” I never expected this tragicomic and strained accusation to get this far. A dark day for the Turkish language.

As I said, even the quotation in the indictment conveys the opposite of the accusation. Nevertheless, I would like to repeat the joke, explaining it as it was performed onstage.

The American comedian Lenny Bruce, who was prosecuted over his jokes, experienced a similar problem. Regarding his jokes being assessed in court from written texts, he said, “Reading a stand-up show from a transcript is like listening to the audio recording of a film.” Because the comedian’s manner during the show, his pauses, the reactions of his audience, and what he says before and afterward create the entire context and meaning of the performance. Just as a film’s dialogue and words take shape through the performance of the actor delivering them, performance and acting are equally essential to a comedian onstage. Comedy is partly about saying the wrong thing, or pretending to say the wrong thing. Sometimes you can find the “wrong” thing by cutting off the ending and looking only at the middle.

“A comedian in Turkey is being prosecuted for what he said. Look at the state we’re in. Where is freedom of expression?” people say about my case. But as this example shows, prosecuting comedians is not unique to Turkey. The American comedian I mentioned, Lenny Bruce, is also prosecuted for his jokes—in 1965! Forty years later, the governor of New York, the state to which the court that tried him belonged, apologizes to the comedian over that prosecution.

Anyway, the joke goes like this: I am describing the vacation I took to get out of my depression after the defeat in the 2023 election. “I lay down on a sun lounger. I said, ‘All right, Deniz, this is life. It’s all behind you now: Turkey, the election, politics… I’m going to let the stress of the whole year drain into the sea.’” There is an opposition-supporting, secular character who has experienced an election defeat. Just as he is about to find peace on vacation, something happens. “Just as I was thinking this, a few people emerged from the sea. You couldn’t see their hair. They were wearing black outfits covering their entire bodies.”

Because I am trying to get away from the election and politics for a while, a great tension develops in the audience. Ninety percent of them think I am describing women wearing haşema. Because this caricatured, reflexive cultural argument has left its mark on years of our lives. And it is a debate charged with enormous tension in society. The audience members who are conservative, liberal, or feminist hold their breath, thinking, “But if this is the kind of person you are, Deniz, you’re a huge disappointment.” The rest think, “You idiot, is this really the issue?” Perhaps one in a thousand thinks, “At last, someone who thinks like I do about women wearing haşema.” I pause. Everyone feels the silence. They grow even more tense, and then I say, “Fucking divers,” and it becomes the biggest laugh and round of applause in the show. Because I catch everyone off guard. Their hair is not visible; they are wearing a black outfit covering the whole body… It really does fit the description of divers as well. In fact, most haşema are not black. In that respect, the description fits divers better. The audience applauds the twist and is also surprised at having been so certain that the answer was haşema rather than divers. At the same time, they experience enormous psychological relief because I have not disappointed them by saying something discriminatory. Five thousand different people understand these sentences, which they are hearing for the first time, and react within seconds. Yet, for some reason, those who prepared the indictment insist on not understanding, despite listening and reading many times and despite my explanations in my defense statements and detention reviews.

Let us say that, up to this point, the sentences are clear, but you doubt my intention. You detect a sinister insinuation in me and the 5,000 audience members. The continuation of the joke is unusually emphatic and explicit for a comedy show! Thankfully, the prosecutor included this part in the indictment even though it defeats the accusation: “Don’t bother applauding. You failed the test.” I say that this was a test and that the audience ended up on the wrong side of it. “Now we’ve got to know you, too,” and “Harbiye lived up to its name”—the latter being a reference to the old controversy over the military and headscarves. And when I say, “Deniz Baykal is not dead; he lives on in your subconscious,” I invoke Deniz Baykal, one of the emblematic figures of the headscarf-ban debates, as the source of those prejudices in the subconscious, as their lingering influence. Everything, including my own position, is perfectly clear. But I continue, analyzing why I like telling this joke: “Most of the audience are lovely people; they get incredibly tense.” By describing as “lovely” the people who are apprehensive that I might say haşema instead of divers, who are afraid I might make a discriminatory remark, I also make my own position in the debate perfectly clear. Afterward, I explain why I really hate divers. “Hate” is, of course, an exaggeration for comic effect, but this is another piece of evidence that when I say divers, I mean divers.

Why do I joke about a subject like this? In some people’s eyes, comedy and stand-up are fields that deal mockingly with trivial subjects and provide entertainment as an escape from reality. Yet for decades, just like the other performing arts, cinema, and the novel, stand-up has produced highly powerful works of art about personal and social issues. Personally, I find stand-up more powerful than other forms of storytelling and their works, especially on subjects considered taboo, contentious, upsetting, or tense. Why? Because laughter is a reflex, and so a controlled response is not possible. That makes it possible to get past certain filters. My 90-minute show brings together my personal embarrassments, contradictions, taboos, fears, and conflicts with social conflicts, tensions, taboos, and contradictions. The fear that suicide bombers or street gangs create in our everyday lives, media figures, political figures, my internship in a psychiatric hospital, and so on—all have a place in the show.

In this joke, too, I do something similar through the subject of clothing, which, for some reason, has occupied so much space in Turkey’s history for so many years. For years, women’s clothing was a subject that male politicians talked about. And we watched. Even as a child, the things some of my supposedly liberal acquaintances said about haşema always struck me as contradictory. Although I no longer encounter people I might call “secular caricatures,” and I do not think they are among my audience either, some residue of those tensions and arguments remains in all our subconscious minds. That, in itself, is funny. I am happy to have brought it out through a joke like this. It is one of my favorite parts of the show.

The strange thing is that it is also the favorite part of my audience members who describe themselves as religious or conservative. They feel seen. One person, for example, told me, “I knew you weren’t going to say haşema. I even told the person next to me.” So I am being tried for denigrating religious people because of the joke conservatives like the most. If I am being prosecuted for denigrating religious values on the basis of these sentences, then everyone in Turkey—and by everyone I really mean all 86 million people—could be prosecuted for denigrating religious values on the basis of every sentence they utter. Extracting that meaning is that forced and that shameful.

I have spent the most time on this joke because this is the most sensitive issue for me. While the other accusations concern the limits of freedom of expression, here I am being accused of something incompatible with my outlook on life and with my show. In another sense, the inclusion of this sentence in the indictment is fortunate for me. While the accusation is discrimination against the religious section of the public, what we see here is criticism directed at the secular section. The accusation collapses under its own contradictions; I harbor no hostility toward any section of society.

I have criticisms of those in power, and I have jokes about every subject relating to Turkey. Ordinary people are not my targets; naturally, they are my audience. The indictment says that, during the prosecutor’s questioning, I admitted that when I said divers, I meant people wearing haşema. This is either a serious mistake or a malicious interpretation. I remember the questioning; I did not say any such thing. According to my statement as recorded, I said: “Here, I am criticizing the prejudice shown toward people who enter the sea wearing haşema. In fact, if you examine the entire passage, I am criticizing people who are prejudiced against those who enter the sea wearing haşema. In the passage, I catch the audience off guard by saying ‘fucking divers.’ At the beginning, the audience thinks I am going to talk about people entering the sea wearing haşema, but I then turn the subject to divers and give a critical performance by confronting the audience with its own prejudice. Indeed, later in the passage, by saying ‘Harbiye, you failed the test,’ I believe I make clear that my intention is to expose the audience’s prejudice.”

As I said, the idea that I could travel all over Turkey, insult people wearing haşema, and be applauded is inconsistent with the ordinary course of life. It is a paranoid and archaic fantasy: that when I said “fucking divers,” I meant people wearing haşema—and there were zero complaints.

The three sentences included in the charge of inciting the public to hatred amount to nothing more than an artificially manufactured targeting campaign by social media trolls who dislike me for political reasons and want to discredit me and have me punished. The fasting joke refers to hunger-induced irritability; there is no disrespect in the fourth-book joke; and the divers joke was a mistake these hostile accounts made in their haste. The public is not made up of 500 CİMER complaints. I believe the way should not be opened for me to be targeted through a campaign. I stand by my sentences. I request my acquittal.

The four sentences I have defended so far are the ones behind both my detention and the charges on which the 61st Criminal Court of First Instance ordered my release 30 days ago. Fifty-seven days after my detention, on the very day I was granted release, I was detained on a third charge arising from the same show, on the grounds that I had praised the Daltonlar gang.

Within the scope of my profession, I addressed an important and current problem in the society in which I live, using humor and irony. Just as a journalist explaining how these criminal networks operate, or a prosecutor preparing an indictment about them, is properly doing their job, that is what I was trying to do as a comedian with this joke.

For the reasons stated above, I reject the charges brought against me and request that the court order my ACQUITTAL and RELEASE.