İstanbul 29th Criminal Court of First Instance sentenced sendika.org editorial board member Ali Ergin Demirhan to 3 months and 22 days in prison over a Charlie Hebdo news article published 10 years ago.
Demirhan was on trial for “insulting religious values” for printing the entire issue of Charlie Hebdo on Sendika.org in 2015 after the newspaper’s pages featuring the Prophet Muhammad cartoon that was blocked.
In 2024, the Constitutional Court (AYM) ruled that the blocking of access to the news websites such as T24, BirGün, İnternethaber and Thelira was a “violation of rights” and violated their freedom of expression. Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling, Sendika.org was targeted by Yeni Akit and Islamist provocative social media accounts. The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office also launched an investigation against Demirhan. Demirhan was called to give statement twice. The investigation turned into a lawsuit with the indictment filed in November 2024. In his defense, Demirhan asked the court to take into account the Constitutional Court’s decision, not the request of provocative accounts.
Demirhan’s lawyers argued that finding insult to the religious values of a section of the public in the article in question was a forced interpretation, and that criminalizing the depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad would be a ruling according to Sharia law, not the Constitution. Announcing its verdict, the court sentenced Demirhan to 6 months in prison for “publicly insulting religious values embraced by a section of the public.” It then reduced the sentence to 3 months and 22 days.
