Turkish prosecutors have drafted a new indictment against the country’s former main opposition leader, seeking a prison sentence and a political ban for him on charges of insulting a public official, the Bianet news website reported.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, former leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is facing a prison sentence of up to three years, seven months on charges of insulting a panel of judges in his remarks critical of a court decision in 2017.
Seven years after he criticized a panel of judges at the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court who handed down a 25-year sentence to a CHP lawmaker, Kılıçdaroğlu is charged with insulting multiple public officials under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
At the time Kılıçdaroğlu had held a news conference at party headquarters where he criticized the court for its ruling on Enis Berberoğlu, who is still a CHP MP, and accused it of making politically motivated decisions.
“None of them are judges, none of them deliver justice. They just fulfill their duty of acting like the pawns of the palace,” Kılıçdaroğlu said of the judges as he accused them acting on orders from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Berberoğlu, a former journalist, was first sentenced to 25 years in prison on espionage charges in 2017 for giving the Cumhuriyet daily a video purporting to show Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) trucking weapons to radical Islamist rebel groups in Syria.
After a long appeals process, his sentence was reduced to five years, 10 months in February 2018. He was released in September 2018 after 15 months of imprisonment.
The investigation into the former CHP leader was initiated based on a complaint from a man named Cihat Toprak.
According to the indictment drafted by İstanbul prosecutors, Kılıçdaroğlu’s remarks targeting the presiding judge of the court, Ali İhsan Horasan, and judges Arif Atanıan and Ayçin Saylık go beyond the limits of freedom of speech or criticism.
The indictment has been accepted by the İstanbul 13th Penal Court of First Instance, and the first hearing has been set for December 16.
Kılıçdaroğlu, who led the CHP from 2010 until 2023, was voted out of CHP leadership last November after he was defeated by Erdoğan in a presidential runoff in May 2023, which led to calls for his resignation.
His prosecution has been made possible due to his lack of parliamentary immunity since he is no longer a member of parliament.
In another trial, he again faces up to more than three years in prison on accusations of “praising crime and criminals” through public statements he made over several years defending victims of a government crackdown on dissent.
The indictment, which was filed following a complaint by members of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in 2022, charges Kılıçdaroğlu with making remarks in support of jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş as well as journalists detained under counterterrorism laws.