A staggering 314 journalists faced legal action during the year of 2023, with 29 held in pre-trial detention, according to a report by the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA). Terrorism-related charges made up the majority of cases involving journalists, accounting for 43 percent of trials.
At least 17 journalists were killed in the earthquakes that struck south-east Turkey in February. But those who survived and reported from the disaster zones faced government harassment for exposing institutional failures. In the space of a week, four journalists were arrested and two others placed under investigation for their comments on the earthquakes.
A new wave of crackdowns on Kurdish journalists took place in the run-up to the presidential elections in May. In April and May, 19 journalists had their homes raided, 36 were arrested and eight were sent to prison. By the end of May, 79 journalists were in prison, according to the Dicle Fırat Journalists’ Association (DFG).
The situation in Turkey has gone from “problematic” to “very bad”, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The organisation ranked Turkey 165th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index for 2023, down from 149th last year.
Condemning the Turkish crackdown on Kurdish media workers, Irene Khan – UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression – had said: “Too often, vague, overly broad anti-terrorism and other criminal laws are misused against journalists.”
However, during a September interview, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defended the high number of jailed journalists.
“If they were supportive of terrorism, those who are supporting terrorism, where would they live or roam freely around the world? These people have been supportive of terrorism,” Erdoğan said in response to journalist Amna Nawaz’s question as to why there are so many journalists in jail in Turkey.
Prominent incidents included the imprisonment of veteran journalist Merdan Yanardağ in June, who had criticised conditions in İmralı Island Prison. Although Yanardağ received a two-and-a-half-year sentence in October, his release was ordered, factoring in his pre-trial detention.
Dominique Pradalié, president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFC), bluntly labelled Turkey as the “biggest open prison in the world for journalists”, underscoring the dire situation faced by Kurdish journalists.
The violence against journalists persisted in June when Sinan Aygül, a journalist known for his reporting on corruption scandals, was violently attacked. The two defendants accused of assaulting Aygül were released by a Turkish court in September.
In July, a Diyarbakır (Amed) court released 18 Kurdish journalists accused of terrorism, while August witnessed a Turkish drone targeting journalists from the Jin TV network in Syria, resulting in casualties.
In November, imprisoned prominent Kurdish journalist Dicle Müftüoğlu won the Most Resilient Journalist Award for 2023. In early December, the court ruled to continue the detention of Müftüoğlu, who was arrested in May and faces up to 15 years in prison.