The Istanbul Criminal Court has acquitted Cumhuriyet journalists Baris Pehlivan and Ozan Alper Yurtoglu, charged with insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former government officials for merely mentioning political corruption in an editorial published in October 2021. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes these acquittals and urges the Turkish authorities to stop abusing legislation to harass journalists and carry out reforms guaranteeing the public’s right to reliable information.
At the end of the case’s 12th hearing on 8 May, the court ruled that the criteria constituting a crime had not been met, despite the prosecutor's 16 January indictment calling for the conviction of Baris Pehlivan and Ozan Alper Yurtoglu, journalists for the newspaper Cumhuriyet. In addition to President Erdogan, the plaintiffs included former Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and former Constitutional Court member Irfan Fidan. The acquittals will be final if the prosecutor does not appeal within two weeks.
Daily columnist Baris Pehlivan and his editor-in-chief Ozan Alper Yurtoglu, had been on trial since 2022 over a column published on 13 October 2021 entitled “This is the CHP brochure” (İşte CHP'nin o broşürü) — the CHP is the Republican People's Party, the leading opposition force. In the column, Baris Pehlivan cites the so-called “SaBiKa Holding” brochure, a text circulated by the CHP on alleged relations between those in power and businessman Sezgin Baran Korkmaz between 2018 and 2021; the entrepreneur later became a fugitive and is currently detained in the USA for “money laundering.”
"While RSF is relieved that two journalists have been acquitted, against the prosecutor’s advice, of trumped-up charges of insulting the president and other political figures, this is a meagre victory. A week earlier, a Swedish journalist was also convicted of insulting the president, and many journalists are still being prosecuted for simply doing their job. Judicial reform is still urgently needed to end the abuse of the repressive legislation that criminalises insults, which is instrumentalised to harass journalists."
Erol Önderoglu
RSF representative in Türkiye
Article 299 of the Turkish Criminal Code, which rules on offending the President, is wielded as a formidable tool for pressuring journalists in Turkey. On 30 April, it was used to convict Joakim Medin, a Swedish journalist and special correspondent for the daily Dagens ETC. Still detained in Türkiye, he was given a suspended sentence of 11 months and 20 days in prison for having published reports via social media of a demonstration in Stockholm in January 2023 organised by activists that were pro-PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Türkiye. Arrested on arrival at Istanbul airport on 27 March, he is awaiting trial on charges of “belonging to an illegal organisation” and “terrorist propaganda”.
Many Turkish journalists also continue to face abusive prosecution for “insulting” or “offending the president,” because they’ve reported on matters of public interest.
