The founder of the Turkish far-right in the modern era is on the fast track to becoming a political “martyr” after his arrest but Ümit Özdağ’s provocative rhetoric has already been the subject of lawsuits.
The Victory Party (ZP) chairman was arrested on charges of inciting hatred on Tuesday evening, hours after he was detained on a separate charge of insulting the president. Imprisoned in Istanbul, Özdağ will appear before a court on an unscheduled date while his supporters claim the charges against him are politically motivated. The opposition parties, not very different than ZP in their anti-migrant, anti-refugee discourse, were quick to rally around Özdağ and claimed the judiciary sought to imprison a rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Long before the judiciary caught with him, Özdağ single-handedly created an unprecedented political movement in Türkiye, more or less fashioned after far-right parties of Europe capitalizing on the influx of migrants to the continent. As Türkiye prided in embracing “brothers and sisters” from neighboring war-torn Syria as Erdoğan called them, Özdağ rushed to lump them with irregular and legal migrants and urged for their deportation. ZP’s “Silent Invasion” campaign accusing the government of opening the borders for irregular migrants helped Özdağ gain popularity, especially on social media, and in a few years, ZP managed to secure a 2.4% vote in the legislative elections of 2023.
The prosecutor’s office in Istanbul that issued the arrest warrant for Özdağ, singled out ZP for its alleged role in inciting riots last summer in the central province of Kayseri. Dozens of foreign-owned shops and homes were torched and damaged by a mob after reports of sexual abuse of a 7-year-old child by a Syrian national. A statement by the prosecutor’s office said Özdağ’s ZP influenced the mob behind the riots, especially through social media. Although Özdağ failed to gather crowds in ZP’s rallies, social media proved a fertile ground to recruit youth to his far-right cause. In response to allegations, Özdağ told the court, which ordered him remanded in custody, that he urged people to “return home” after riots broke out in Kayseri and claimed ZP had no role in inciting riots.
Long before the Kayseri riots, Özdağ was behind a campaign in the aftermath of the February 2023 earthquakes that claimed thousands of lives in Türkiye’s south, especially provinces with a relatively large Syrian refugee population. In one instance, he shared a video of a “Syrian thief trying to steal cellphone of a firefighter working to rescue earthquake survivors.” The “thief” in question was a Turkish man who volunteered in rescue efforts and the cellphone was his. Özdağ’s ZP was also active in social media to spread the propaganda that Syrian refugees were involved in looting in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Earlier, Özdağ countered official figures of low crime rate among refugees and migrants and claimed the “Syrian mafia is growing” in the country.
He also launched a publicity stunt in the run-up to the general elections of 2023, promoting his “Zafer Tourism” agency for “sending refugees and migrants back to where they came from.” In 2023, he called the government to withdraw from an anti-mine treaty and plant landmines along the country’s borders to discourage migrants.
