Calling minister 'palace jester' not crime, rules Turkey's top court

Duvar English

Turkey's Constitutional Court has found that the conviction of former Halk TV editor-in-chief Şaban Sevinç for calling former Youth and Sports Minister Akif Çağatay Kılıç a “palace jester” violated his right to freedom of expression, overturning the local court's ruling.

The case concerns Sevinç's remarks against Kılıç during a meeting in the Black Sea province of Samsun prior to the Nov. 1, 2015 parliamentary elections. Sevinç was at the time an MP candidate for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) representing his hometown of Samsun. Sevinç said during the meeting that he knew Kılıç's grandfather and said he wished Kılıç would “tread in his grandfather's footsteps, serving for Samsun, instead of acting as a jester of the palace.”

An Ankara court in November of 2015 convicted Sevinç on charges of “insulting a public official explicitly” and ordered him to pay 4,700 Turkish Liras. Sevinç later applied to the Constitutional Court, which said in a recent ruling that Sevinç's right to freedom of expression was violated.

“Although it cannot be said that the expression of 'palace jester' used by the applicant is not aggressive and disturbing, it should be considered that it was used in a political debate to which the complaint's statements made a contribution...The expression that is the subject of the application has been evaluated to be within the limits of criticism,” said the top court.

“It has been concluded that an intervention made against the applicant's freedom expression is not in line with the necessities of a democratic social order,” it said.