A Turkish court has postponed the trial of journalist and publisher Hakkı Boltan, who is being prosecuted on charges of “insulting the president,” after deciding to send the case file to the prosecutor to prepare the final opinion on the merits of the case.
The hearing took place at the 12th Criminal Court of First Instance in Diyarbakır, a majority-Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey. Boltan, who is co-chair of the Kurdish Publishers Association, regional representative of the DİSK Press Workers’ Union, and owner of Aram Publishing House, did not attend the hearing, but was represented by his lawyer, Resul Temur. The legal representatives of the complainants—President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu—were also absent.
The prosecutor requested the case file to prepare the final opinion (known in Turkish law as esas hakkında mütalaa). Boltan’s lawyer, Temur, requested that procedural deficiencies in the case be addressed. The court ruled to send the file to the prosecutor and postponed the trial until Jan. 6, 2026.
What led to the charges?
The charges against Boltan date back to a 2019 indictment by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, which lists President Erdoğan and then-Prime Minister Davutoğlu as complainants. The indictment is based on a statement Boltan made in Kurdish in 2016 during a press conference related to Rohat Aktaş, the former managing editor of the now-closed Kurdish-language newspaper Azadiya Welat, who died during a military-imposed curfew in the town of Cizre in Şırnak province.
At the time, Boltan was co-chair of the Free Journalists Association (Özgür Gazeteciler Cemiyeti, ÖGC), which was later shut down by presidential decree under Turkey’s post-coup state of emergency. The prosecution claims that the language Boltan used in that statement constituted insults against both Erdoğan and Davutoğlu, accusing him of “insulting the president” and “insulting a public official due to their position.”
On June 29, 2021, the Diyarbakır court sentenced Boltan to 1 year, 2 months, and 17 days in prison for insulting President Erdoğan and 10 months for insulting Davutoğlu. The court did not suspend the sentences.
However, Boltan’s lawyer appealed the verdict, and on Oct. 27, 2022, the 2nd Criminal Chamber of the Diyarbakır Regional Court of Justice overturned the ruling. The appellate court found that sentencing Boltan separately for two offenses based on the same statement amounted to an excessive punishment.
