A Turkish court on Tuesday ordered the arrest of YouTube host Boğaç Soydemir and his guest Enes Akgündüz over a joke on a popular YouTube channel that was accused of mocking a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, the Anka news agency reported.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said the two men were charged with “inciting hatred and enmity or insulting a segment of the public” under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). They were detained on orders from prosecutors and, after giving statements, were referred to a court that ruled for their arrest.
The controversy erupted after a viewer-submitted joke was read aloud on the show on the channel “Soğuk Savaş” (Cold War), playing on the phrase “Alcohol is the mother of all evils,” commonly cited as a hadith, or saying, of the Prophet. The punchline added a sexual pun that critics said amounted to an insult of Muhammad.
Soydemir issued an apology on social media, saying he had no intention of insulting religious values and that he first saw the joke while on the program. “I thought it was just wordplay, but I should have reflected on it more,” he wrote, adding that the clip was removed after the broadcast.
Arkadaşlar,
Geçtiğimiz günlerde yaptığım bir şaka ile kırdığım insanlardan özür dilemek istiyorum. Böyle bir niyetim kesinlikle yoktu. Normalde kendi yaptığım şakalarda hassasiyet göstermeye özen gösteriyorum. Ancak o sırada izleyicilerden gelen şakalara geçmiştik ve ben de o…
— educatedear (@educatedear) September 22, 2025
Soydemir, known online by the username “Educatedear,” is a social media influencer. Like Soydemir, Enes Akgündüz is also a well-known content creator.
“Soğuk Savaş” has around 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
Turkey is a predominantly Muslim but officially secular country, though authorities frequently pursue cases against public figures over comments about Islam, Islamic law or the Prophet.
In a similar development earlier in summer, five staff members of the LeMan satirical magazine were arrested over a cartoon in its June 26 issue that allegedly insulted religious values by depicting the prophets Muhammad and Moses.
The cartoon shows two men named Muhammad and Moses greeting each other above a bombed city. The illustration sparked outrage among religious and conservative circles in İstanbul and attracted condemnation from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and senior government officials.
In recent years, Turkey has tightened control over digital platforms through laws expanding state oversight of online content. Authorities regularly block access to websites, investigate social media posts and sanction platforms for failing to comply with content removal orders.
Turkey was ranked the lowest-scoring country in Europe for online freedoms, according to a report from the Washington-based Freedom House last October. Turkey has a score of 31 in a 100-point index, with scores based on a scale of 0 (least free) to 100 (most free) and is listed as “not free.”