Ümit Özdağ, chair of Victory Party (ZP), was sentenced on Tuesday on charges of inciting hatred, while the court ruled for his release due to time spent in detention. The far-right politician was detained one day after an inflammatory speech in January and taken to Silivri prison-courthouse complex in Istanbul.
He appeared in a courtroom within the same complex on Tuesday, denying the charges against him. Prosecutors have asked for a prison term of up to seven years and 10 months for Özdağ, who garnered a following thanks to his staunch anti-migrant stance. The court handed down a prison term of two years, four months, and 15 days for Özdağ and eligibility for release without judicial control.
ZP’s administrators were joined by Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, who once served in the former party of Özdağ, who is a former member of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), as well as representatives from opposition parties.
In the previous hearing of the trial, Özdağ had asked for more time to prepare his defense while the prosecutor revised his plea for sentencing of Özdağ at Tuesday’s hearing. The prosecutor told the court that Özdağ was behind social media posts that promoted crimes and should be handed down a prison term exceeding seven years in prison, instead of a prison term up to four and a half years, as he had asked in the first hearing. The prosecutor based the review on new evidence. Media-savvy Özdağ, whose tweets often included derogatory remarks against migrants peppered with promises to deport them, submitted his arguments to the hearing that his social media posts “did not incite people.”
The indictment against Özdağ was prepared after a criminal complaint by the Interior Ministry, which says Özdağ shared social media posts containing disinformation against Syrians and other refugees in Türkiye and posts aimed to provoke people, which amounted to hate speech. The indictment also included a report prepared by the police directorate in the central province of Kayseri that pointed out that a mob attacking Syrians in the province was influenced by social media posts of ZP members and their affiliates.
The indictment highlighted that Özdağ’s posts were influential in paving the way for attacks targeting Syrians.
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