Türkiye Blocks X Posts Sharing Clips of Deniz Göktaş's Viral Erdoğan Comedy Show

Key Takeaways

• Türkiye blocked X posts sharing clips from Deniz Göktaş's comedy show "Ölü Deniz" under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, citing national security and public order
• The show was released free on YouTube on June 24 and surpassed 2 million views within days
• The block followed criticism from a ruling AKP party figure who accused Göktaş of insulting Erdoğan
• No official explanation was issued for why stand-up comedy clips qualified as a national security threat

The Government Decided Comedy Is a Threat to National Security

Türkiye has blocked X posts sharing clips from "Ölü Deniz" (Dead Sea), comedian Deniz Göktaş's stand-up show recorded on June 1 at the Harbiye Cemil Topuzlu Open-Air Theater in İstanbul. The Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD) confirmed that X complied with the removal under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, the provision that lets Türkiye’s authorities order content taken down without a court ruling in urgent cases touching national security, public order, public health, or the protection of life and property.

The show went up on YouTube on June 24 as a free upload and crossed 5 million views within days. The 90-minute set covered Erdoğan, İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu (who has been jailed since March 2025 on corruption charges his party calls politically motivated), street protests in İstanbul, and a court order that annulled the main opposition CHP's 2023 congress.

What triggered the block was criticism from Şamil Tayyar, a former member of the AKP's top decision-making body, who publicly accused Göktaş of insulting Erdoğan and argued the remarks should not be treated as humor. A ruling party official complained, and the national security law handed the bureaucracy all the cover it needed to act, with no judge required and no public explanation owed to anyone.

Türkiye has already sentenced journalists for their opinions before, so going after a comedian wouldn’t be anything that new for them. The mechanism here is the same, just applied faster and with less paperwork.

When 2 Million Laughs Become a Public Order Problem

The virality is the point. A 90-minute stand-up set about Erdoğan now already standing at over 5 million views is evidence the jokes landed, and that, apparently, is what made them dangerous. The X posts are now invisible to users inside Türkiye, while anyone outside the country sees them without obstruction, making it a surgical geo-block rather than a platform-wide blackout.

A removal notice served to a user who shared a clip shows exactly what Türkiye's users now see when they try to access the posts. Türkiye has shut down X entirely in the past, so I suppose this counts as progress.

Targeting specific posts instead of the whole platform is, in theory, more proportionate. In practice, it is more troubling, because it means the censorship infrastructure is now precise enough to locate and suppress individual pieces of content by topic, without disrupting anything else.

Not too long ago, China banned a comedian for a joke about average family life reality, and the parallel is all too obvious: governments with thin-skinned leadership and broad national security laws do not need a legal theory, they just need a mechanism.

National Security Is Whatever the President Can't Take a Joke About

Article 8/A was written for emergencies. Applying it to stand-up clips, on the complaint of an AKP official with no judicial review and no public justification, is a demonstration of how far that definition has drifted. As of Friday, no official statement had been issued explaining how a comedy set constitutes a threat to national security or public order.

The block simply happened, and the show's YouTube upload remains live globally, which means Türkiye's government managed to simultaneously suppress the jokes on one platform and confirm for the rest of the world exactly which jokes it found most threatening.

If you're in Türkiye and your government's definition of national security now extends to which comedy clips you're allowed to see on X, Mysterium VPN, currently with 78% off, routes your traffic through a node outside the jurisdiction, making geo-targeted content blocks irrelevant to your connection. And, to be honest, it’s probably safer to watch such shows online anyway, because, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if attending something like this in Türkiye alone could make you a “threat to national security.”