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Turkish media reported on Friday that a homeless Turkish man confessed that he deliberately committed the crime of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in order to get food and a place to sleep in prison.
The media added that the 66-year-old man was arrested on charges of insulting the president in a park in the southern coastal city of Alanya near Antalya.
According to the "Sözcü" newspaper, he told the court, which ordered his pretrial detention in the case, "I have nowhere to stay, and I sleep in garbage dumps. That is why I did this."
Reports indicated that the man had repeated the act three times before, but has not yet succeeded in being placed in pretrial detention.
Insulting the president is a punishable crime by law in Turkey, and it has been used repeatedly to prosecute critics of the authorities.
The authorities have charged thousands of people with this crime, ranging from journalists to teenagers, and even a former Miss Turkey.
Although this crime has been stipulated in Turkish law for decades, resorting to it has increased significantly since Turkey transitioned to the presidential system in 2018.
Ministry of Justice statistics showed that between 2016 and the end of 2025, prosecutors opened about 83,000 cases related to crimes stipulated in Articles 299 to 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which include insulting the president, insulting the Turkish flag and state symbols, and insulting the Turkish nation and state institutions.
Article 299 stipulates that the crime of insulting the president is punishable by imprisonment ranging from one to four years.
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