Prosecutors on Saturday opened an investigation into a 95-year-old billionaire and honorary chairman of Koc Holdings, Turkey’s largest conglomerate, over a joke about a Kurdish woman widely denounced as sexist and racist.
The mistake was made by Rahmi Koc at the opening of a hospital in the western resort city of Izmir late on Friday, but when the footage started circulating online it caused a backlash.
The joke, which revolved around a misunderstanding between a Kurdish woman and a doctor, also drew the ire of the pro-Kurdish opposition party DEM, which said it had filed a complaint against him.
The investigation was announced by Justice Minister Akin Gurlek in X, who said he had ended “expressions thought to target women and citizens of a specific ethnic identity” although he did not publicly name Koc.
“Saying such words under the guise of a ‘joke’ or humor does not mitigate this discourse displayed against our women and a certain segment of our society,” he wrote.
Also in X, DEM said it filed a criminal complaint against Koc “for making sexist remarks against Kurdish women, on the grounds of “public incitement to hatred and enmity”, “insult” and “hatred and discrimination”.
In response to the backlash, Koc issued a brief apology published by Koc Holding on X, saying his remarks “were not intended to target any particular group”.
“I want to sincerely express my regret,” he wrote.
Koc stepped down as chairman of Koc Holding in 2003, handing the reins to his eldest son, Mustafa Koc, who died suddenly of a heart attack in 2016. He was 55.
Koc Holding is a family-run conglomerate established in the 1920s whose main sectors are energy, automotive, consumer durables and finance, although it is also involved in technology, food, retail, tourism, agriculture and shipbuilding.
Family-run conglomerates are mainstays of Turkey’s economy with interests in every sector, with Koc Holding accounting for roughly seven percent of Turkey’s GDP and about eight percent of Turkish exports, its website said.
This year Forbes magazine estimated that Rahmi Koc has a fortune of 2.4 billion dollars.
