Türkiye: Ten Years of State Hostility Towards the Press under President Erdogan

Four journalists are currently detained in Türkiye, which is the lowest figure in decades after a let-up in mass arrests of media personnel. But judicial harassment of the media is still widespread. Media professionals subjected to judicial proceedings leading to arrests in recent years have included investigative journalists, TV presenters, and determined reporters such as Tolga Sardan, Merdan Yanardag, Baris Pehlivan, Abdurrahman Gök, and Furkan Karabay.

The most common charges brought against media personnel include spreading “propaganda for a terrorist organisation” and “exposing a counter-terrorist official to the threat of terrorist organisations” under the terrorism law (TMK), or “insulting a public official,” “insulting the president,” and “denigrating state institutions” under the criminal code (TCK).

According to the tally kept by news site and RSF partner Bianet.org,, over the past 10 years, a total of 77 journalists have been fined or given prison sentences (in some cases suspended) for “insulting the president” in articles, editorials, or comments posted or shared on social media.

Erol Onderoglu, RSF’s Türkiye representative, is a co-defendant in a criminal case alongside fellow journalist Ahmet Nesin and human rights defender Sebnem Korur Fincanci, that has dragged on for more than eight years. They are charged with propaganda in favour of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for participating in a journalistic solidarity campaign in support of Özgür Gündem, a pro-Kurdish newspaper that was forcibly closed under the state of emergency in 2016. Their acquittals were overturned in October 2020 after being publicly criticised by Erdogan.

The Erdogan administration’s persecution of journalists recognises no borders. For years after fleeing abroad, journalists such as Erk Acarer, Hayko Bagdat, and Fehim Tastekin have been subjected to judicial proceedings or administrative reprisals in connection with their journalism.

Can Dündar, the former editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet (Republic), was personally threatened by Erdogan, forced to flee into exile abroad and sentenced in absentia to 27 and a half years in prison for a 2015 story headlined “İşte Erdoğan’ın yok dediği silahlar” (“Here are the weapons that Erdogan says do not exist”). Erdogan responded: “The person who wrote this exclusive article will pay dearly. I won’t let him get away with it.”

Online platforms blocked

Social media platforms have also been censored by the Erdogan administration. Instagram was rendered inaccessible on 2 August on the grounds of “catalog offenses” such as child abuse and drug use. The access ban, announced without any explanations, is based on Article 8 of the Internet Law, which allows content or websites to be made inaccessible on a number of grounds, including “pornography,” “sale of products endangering health,” “incitement to suicide” or “offence to the memory of the founder of the Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.”

But the ban was imposed after Instagram restricted access to Erdogan’scondolences messages for the death of the Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh. Wikipedia was blocked in Türkiye for three years beginning in 2017 over content and articles allegedly complicit with jihadist organisations in Syria., Twitter was blocked in March 2014 over audio recordings implicating Turkish politicians.

Five journalists killed

Türkiye’s media had been spared political assassinations since the murder in 2007 of Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist who founded and edited the dual-language weekly Agos. But five journalists have been murdered since Erdogan became president – three Syrian journalists who had fled the civil war that began in Syria in 2011 and two journalists located in the cities of Bursa and Kocaeli.

When Erdogan became president in 2014, Türkiye was ranked 154th out of 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index. It fell to 165th in 2023, and ranks 158th in the 2024 Index.

Key figures from Erdogan’s ten years as president:

• Five journalists killed
• 131 journalists detained (for more than 48 hours), 40 of whom were convicted
• 77 journalists convicted of “insulting the president”
• 85% of national media controlled by the government
• Three major social media platforms blocked (Instagram, Wikipedia, Twitter)