Turkey wants a German comedian who insulted Turkish President Erdogan with a poem on his TV show to be executed.
Turkey also wants one of the country's most popular comedians to be jailed for allegedly insulting a provincial governor.
Cem Yilmaz, who is also an award-winning actor and musician, went on trial on Monday and is facing up to two years behind bars after posting a series of tweets "criticising the governor of northwestern Yalova province over the death of a mathematics teacher," according to AFP.
The governor, Selim Cebiroglu, aggressively berated a maths teacher in front of his students over his beard and clothes, by noting that he could be "mistaken for a beggar."
The incident took place in March last year. The teacher Halil Serkan Oz, 42, sadly died of a heart attack a week later at a protest against the governor.
Yilmaz tweeted after the teacher's death, saying, "Crushing a man by using the power of an official position and fatally breaking his heart... What a shame that the poor teacher died. May you rise to even more important positions, Mr Governor!"
The comedian didn't make a personal appearance in court on Monday; his lawyer Rengin Gonenc Yuksel argued that Yilmaz "had not committed any crime", according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.
"At no point in his tweet does he say 'you did it'. What he did was criticise," the lawyer said, adding that Yilmaz was commenting "in his capacity as a humorist, an artist."
Yilmaz isn't the only person to be prosecuted for criticizing the government and Erdogan.
"Leaders must be more tolerant towards criticism," said Yuksel.
Such cases have raised the alarm that freedom of expression in Turkey is quickly going down under.
A household name in Turkey, Yilmaz won several awards for his brilliant roles in Turkish dramas and films. He also starred alongside Hollywood actor Russel Crowe in the 2014 movie "The Water Diviner" set after the end of World War I.
