A Turkish comedian with millions of views on YouTube was arrested Thursday at the Istanbul airport upon his return from abroad for “denigrating religious values” through his jokes about the Quran, according to the EFE news agency, as reported by Agerpres.

The arrest of 32-year-old comedian Deniz Goktaş was ordered by the Turkish Prosecutor’s Office, which opened an investigation after conservative groups close to the government denounced certain segments of a stand-up comedy showcomedy show posted on YouTube, which went viral, surpassing 8.5 million views in just one week.

A statement from the Prosecutor’s Office, published by the newspaper Cumhuriyet, confirms the arrest at the airport and indicates that the investigation concerns “denigration of the religious values of a segment of the population.”

Several of Deniz Goktaş’s humorous comments about the Quran were considered by his critics to be offensive to Islam. The comedian referred to the four sacred texts (the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Quran) as if they were works in a literary series.

But his show also includes satirical references to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his long tenure in power. The Turkish comedian describes his country’s president as a politician who has evolved “from a timid dictator to a dictator at peace with his own identity.”

In another segment, he ironically states that he would like to be the president’s therapist, though he assures the audience that he could never be hired, since such a position would surely end up in the hands of a member of Erdogan’s family.

His jokes, however, were not limited to the government and the president. In the same show, the comedian also satirized Istanbul’s jailed mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, who is an opponent of Erdogan.

source – AGERPRES