Press Freedom Groups Condemn Turkey’s Escalating Use of “Disinformation Law” Against Journalists

A coalition of 25 international press freedom organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists, has issued a joint statement condemning Turkey’s intensified crackdown on journalism through its controversial “disinformation law.”

Since its implementation in October 2022, Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code has been wielded against at least 83 journalists in 114 separate cases, according to recent reports. The law has become a powerful tool in what critics describe as a systematic attempt to silence independent media voices in the country.

The scope of the crackdown has expanded dramatically in recent months, with authorities accelerating arrests and detentions of reporters under the law’s vaguely defined prohibitions against spreading “untrue information.”

Among the most targeted journalists are BirGün reporter İsmail Arı and Deutsche Welle Turkish correspondent Alican Uludağ, who have faced charges six and four times respectively. Both journalists are currently imprisoned.

The wave of recent arrests illustrates a concerning pattern. On February 19, Uludağ was detained in Ankara and transferred to Istanbul on charges of “insulting the president” and spreading disinformation. While he was ultimately arrested on the former charge, the disinformation allegations remain pending.

In March, journalist Bilal Özcan was taken into custody after reporting that an influencer’s death might have been a homicide rather than suicide. He remains in pretrial detention in Istanbul. Shortly after, İsmail Arı was detained while visiting family and transported to Ankara for reporting on financial mismanagement of public foundations. Despite maintaining that his reporting contained information already in the public domain, Arı was imprisoned pending trial and remains in Sincan Prison.

The crackdown intensified in April with multiple convictions. Journalists Murat Ağırel and Barış Pehlivan each received sentences of one year and three months for commentary on a television broadcast regarding trade between Turkey and Israel. Their verdicts are currently under appeal.

In a separate case, journalist Zafer Arapkirli was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for a social media post condemning attacks on Alawite settlements in Syria. The court deemed this post violated the disinformation law.

More recently, Turgay Kılıç of NEO TV was detained at his workplace for sharing screenshots of threats circulating on Telegram that targeted schools in İzmir. Though subsequently released under judicial supervision, he still faces prosecution. Similarly, Mehmet Yetim, editorial director of Kulis TV, was detained for a social media post that authorities claimed violated the law. Despite his family’s insistence that he had no criminal intent, he was ordered held in pretrial detention.

Press freedom advocates argue that Turkey has become a global outlier in its misuse of fake news legislation to suppress media freedom. The coalition of organizations highlighted structural flaws in the law, noting its failure to clearly define what constitutes “untrue information” or to specify what content poses a genuine threat to national security or public order.

As one prosecuted journalist pointed out, the law effectively allows authorities to deem any information not sourced from the government as potentially false. This ambiguity grants courts unchecked power to determine what constitutes criminal reporting, enabling systematic prosecution of critical journalism.

The coalition emphasized that a free and independent press serves as the most effective safeguard against the spread of misinformation. They called on Turkish authorities to immediately release all journalists arrested under Article 217/A, drop all pending charges, repeal the law entirely, and align all media legislation with Turkey’s international obligations regarding freedom of expression.

The statement was coordinated by the International Press Institute as part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response, a European mechanism that monitors press freedom violations in EU Member States and candidate countries.