Veteran Turkey analyst and investor Timothy Ash is under investigation over allegations that he insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish state-run news provider Anadolu Agency reported on August 27.

Video footage posted on the X account of @doganburak29 (also viewable via stockholmcf here) shows Ash talking about sociopathic leaders of our times as he addresses an audience at a finance meeting in Bodrum in Turkey’s western coastal province of Mugla.

He says: “We’re in an era of maybe sociopathic leaders, I would say, and it’s, it’s, you know, what is in the interests of these individuals. You know, the Netanyahus, the Erdogan – oops, I didn’t say that, take that back, stop the video. It’s okay, it’ll be on the front page of Sabah tomorrow with a little picture of [British historian] Timothy Garton Ash, this little guy with a ginger beard, he said that.”

It is unclear when the meeting in Bodrum took place.

Bloomberg reported that Ash declined to comment when asked about the situation, but in a post on X after the investigation was announced, he wrote: “A genuine slip of the tongue, which I retracted immediately, & absolutely no offence intended.”

London-based Ash is a senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at RBC BlueBay Asset Management who often shares his assessments of Turkey’s economy and politics on social media, in media titles and in his own substack column. He is also an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House.

In an August 28 statement, the Bakirkoy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul said it had launched an investigation. It added that the subject of the investigation was “TA” and added that the charge was “insulting the president”.

In Turkey, this is a crime punishable with a prison sentence of up to four years.

In June 26, IntelliNews reported on how Turkish standup comedian Deniz Goktas faced arrest after saying on stage that Erdogan had transitioned from a "shy dictator" into one who is "at peace with his own identity".

On July 5, this publication reported the jailing of Goktas pending trial.