{"id":129327,"date":"2026-07-14T16:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T16:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/129327\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T16:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T16:39:10","slug":"turkeys-post-coup-crackdown-10-years-on-press-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/129327\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s post-coup crackdown, 10 years on: Press freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ten years after a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, Turkey\u2019s independent media has been largely dismantled through a combination of mass imprisonment, outlet closures, regulatory punishment, internet censorship and the consolidation of media ownership in pro-government hands.<\/p>\n

The government has employed a range of methods, including terrorism prosecutions, the summary closure of media outlets by emergency decrees, the cancellation of press cards, fines and broadcast bans imposed by the state broadcast regulator, the blocking of news websites and social media accounts, criminal liability for \u201cdisinformation\u201d and continued pressure on journalists in exile.<\/p>\n

The crackdown initially focused on journalists and media outlets accused of links to the faith-based G\u00fclen movement, but pro-Kurdish media, opposition-aligned broadcasters, leftist outlets and individual critical reporters have all since been targeted.<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has targeted followers of the G\u00fclen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah G\u00fclen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a G\u00fclenist conspiracy and designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after the coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused G\u00fclen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the attempted coup or any terrorist activity.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the coup attempt, the government summarily shut down nearly 200 media outlets<\/a> under emergency decrees due to their alleged links to terrorism, while dozens of journalists were jailed on terrorism or coup-related charges. The press cards of hundreds of journalists were canceled<\/a> on terrorism charges, and by 2018 Turkey had become the world\u2019s biggest jailer of journalists. The Stockholm Center for Freedom\u2019s \u201cJailed and Wanted Journalists in Turkey\u201d database<\/a> has documented hundreds of journalists imprisoned, wanted, in exile or at large over the decade since the coup attempt.<\/p>\n

Terrorism legislation has remained the principal legal instrument used against the press. Journalists have most frequently faced charges of \u201cmembership in a terrorist organization\u201d or \u201cdisseminating terrorist propaganda,\u201d often based on their reporting. Journalists from the pro-Kurdish \u00d6zg\u00fcr G\u00fcndem daily, which was shut down by emergency decree in 2016, were still being sentenced<\/a> on propaganda charges in retrials nearly a decade later, while mass police operations against pro-Kurdish media outlets, including the detention of 11 journalists<\/a> from the Mezopotamya news agency and JINNEWS in 2022, recurred throughout the period.<\/p>\n

Legal pressure has been reinforced by the concentration of media ownership in pro-government hands. Most Turkish newspapers and television stations came under the control of government-aligned business allies, and according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), about 90 percent<\/a> of the country\u2019s national media outlets are now under government control.<\/p>\n

The remaining independent outlets operate under constant regulatory threat. The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RT\u00dcK), whose board is dominated by the ruling party, has repeatedly penalized critical broadcasters: In 2025 alone it imposed 99 sanctions<\/a>, fined broadcasters and digital platforms approximately $5.3 million and ordered multi-day broadcast suspensions, with 87 percent of sanctions targeting the five stations most critical of the government. The pro-opposition TELE1 broadcaster was put under government trusteeship in October 2025, and its editor-in-chief was arrested on charges of espionage.<\/p>\n

New legislation has expanded the legal tools used against journalists. Article 217\/A of the penal code, known as the disinformation law, entered into force in October 2022 and calls for prison sentences of one to three years for spreading information authorities deem false. Press freedom organizations say the law has been used to charge at least 83 journalists in 114 separate cases<\/a>, while the Turkish Journalists Union reported that more than 300 journalists faced prosecution<\/a> between April 2025 and April 2026, describing the abuses as part of an institutionalized regime of repression.<\/p>\n

The March 2025 arrest of \u0130stanbul Mayor Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s main political rival, triggered the most intense wave of media repression in years. Journalists covering the ensuing mass protests were detained and prosecuted, RT\u00dcK threatened to revoke the licenses of networks that departed from official statements; authorities blocked social media accounts and throttled internet bandwidth; and foreign correspondents were also targeted<\/a>. Swedish journalist Joakim Medin was detained upon arrival in Turkey, and BBC correspondent Mark Lowen was deported after being accused of posing a threat to public order.<\/p>\n

Leaving the country has not put journalists beyond the government\u2019s reach. During Sweden\u2019s NATO accession process, Ankara made the extradition of journalists living in exile an explicit condition for ratifying membership, with Erdo\u011fan naming journalist B\u00fclent Kene\u015f<\/a>, the former editor-in-chief of the shuttered Today\u2019s Zaman daily, as someone Sweden needed to hand over. Sweden\u2019s Supreme Court blocked Kene\u015f\u2019s extradition<\/a> in December 2022, citing the political nature of the case and the risk of persecution, and in 2025 Swedish courts rejected Turkey\u2019s extradition request<\/a> for journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, ruling that the accusations against him were based on his journalistic activities. Journalists in exile in Sweden, including Kene\u015f, Bozkurt and Levent Kenez, have also been targeted<\/a> by the pro-government Sabah daily, which published their home addresses and covertly taken photographs, while Turkish authorities have restricted access inside Turkey to the social media accounts<\/a> of at least five prominent exiled journalists, including Can D\u00fcndar and Amberin Zaman.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s international standing reflects the decade-long decline. The country was ranked 159th out of 180<\/a> in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by RSF, and Erdo\u011fan has repeatedly appeared on RSF\u2019s list of \u201cpress freedom predators.\u201d<\/a> Following a joint mission to Ankara in November 2025, eight leading international press freedom organizations, including the International Press Institute, the Committee to Protect Journalists and RSF, warned that the state of the media posed a serious threat to democracy<\/a>, describing the pressure on independent journalism as a \u201csystemic siege.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the 2016 coup attempt, Ankara has transformed the suppression of independent journalism from an emergency measure into a permanent system of control, combining criminal prosecution, regulatory punishment, ownership capture and digital censorship, and adapting its methods as new outlets and platforms have emerged.<\/p>\n

Despite repeated criticism from international press freedom organizations, the Council of Europe and rulings by Turkey\u2019s own Constitutional Court in favor of jailed journalists, the machinery remains fully intact. Ten years after the coup attempt, journalism in Turkey continues to be treated as a crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten years after a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, Turkey\u2019s independent media has been largely dismantled through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[83],"tags":[62913,13564,422,423,56521,62914,62915,26717,425,426,312,427,428,62916,429,62917,431,131,132,155],"class_list":["post-129327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-stockholm","tag-2022-disinformation-law","tag-abdullah-bozkurt","tag-ak-party","tag-akp","tag-amberin-zaman","tag-article-217-a","tag-bulent-kenes","tag-can-dundar","tag-democracy","tag-erdogan","tag-human-rights","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-levent-kenez","tag-oppression","tag-ozgur-gundem","tag-rule-of-law","tag-stockholm","tag-sweden","tag-turkey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116919321577930570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}