Turkey wants three years jail for pop star whose crime was two men dancing

Mabel Matiz faces obscenity charges because the groom in his wedding video took his jacket off.

Told by Claire Lawson · 4 October 2026

Two men dance at a wedding, fully clothed, not touching. One has removed his jacket. For this, Turkish prosecutors want Mabel Matiz jailed for up to three years.

An Istanbul court received the indictment this week, LGBTQ Nation reports. The charge is obscenity. The evidence is the music video for Ha Leyli, which shows a wedding where Matiz and the groom exchange looks throughout, then dance together at the end while everyone else collapses on the ground. The men perform rapid arm movements. They do not touch.

The indictment — because this is how state power works when it wants to humiliate you — notes that the groom has removed his jacket for that part of the video. He is still wearing a vest and a shirt.

Matiz told prosecutors in August that two people looking at each other and dancing together is not a crime, Turkish Minute reported. He said the video is art, open to interpretation, and that claims of obscenity are related to the fact that he is out as queer. If convicted, he faces six months to three years in prison and a fine.

This is his second prosecution in eighteen months. A court acquitted him in May over his 2025 song Perperişan, saying the state failed to make its case. The state has learned nothing — or it has learned exactly what it wanted to, which is that queer visibility can be prosecuted until it stops.

The timing is not coincidental. The charge arrives as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government escalates its crackdown on LGBTQ+ people under the My Family is Safe initiative, ostensibly to combat falling birth rates. Over the weekend of September 13, police raided LGBTQ+ bars, the offices of LGBTQ+ associations, and activists' homes across twelve provinces. Dozens were detained. According to AFP, prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for more than 160 people. Authorities have blocked access to dozens of websites and social media accounts linked to LGBTQ+ organisations. This week, Turkey's justice ministry shut down a major news website for publishing what it called LGBT propaganda.

So: what this means for Australians watching authoritarian governments tighten their grip is that obscenity law is the tool, not the reason. The reason is that queer people exist in public, make art, and refuse to pretend otherwise. A man takes off his jacket at a wedding and dances with another man, and the state calls it a crime.

Matiz denied the charge is legitimate. He is right. The question is whether Turkish courts will agree — and whether being right a second time will be enough to keep him out of prison.