The TGS Press Freedom Report was prepared to identify and expose all aspects of interventions against
the press during the one-year period from April 2024 to April 2025.
Under the heading ‘Journalists in Prison and Under House Arrest, Arrests and Releases’, the report
includes a list of journalists in prison, the distribution of charges against journalists in indictments, the status of journalist arrests in the last year, and releases. As the number of cases has increased rapidly, this year we have also included data on the judicial control measure known as ‘house arrest,’ which prohibits individuals from leaving their homes.
The section titled ‘Investigations’ contains data on the detention and investigations of journalists, while the section titled ‘Trials’ contains data on the legal proceedings against journalists over the past year. We have also included summaries of individual application decisions published by the Constitutional Court.
In the ‘Disinformation Crime Report’, you will find an up-to-date overview of the crime of ‘publicly disseminating misleading information’ under Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code, which has been used particularly against journalists since it came into force in 2022. Under the heading ‘Attacks and Impunity’, we present numerical data on physical and verbal attacks against journalists and media organisations. We then provide an update on the status of cases involving the murder of journalists and attacks against them.
Under ‘Interventions Targeting the Internet’, we discuss decisions to block access to and remove content from online media. The section titled ‘Interventions Targeting Media Organisations’ provides detailed explanations of interventions by the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) and the Press Advertising Board (BİK). All of this data can be found in the tables in the ANNEX. Under the heading ‘Legislative Changes’, we provided information on legal changes that closely concern journalists and media organisations.
This year, unlike previous years, you will find another report within the report. It was necessary to include a separate section on the interventions directed at the press during the two weeks following the arrest and detention of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and presidential candidate of the CHP, on 19 March 2025. We have provided detailed information on the events that took place during this period under the heading ‘Saraçhane Protests: 19 March-1 April Special Report on Press Freedom’.
The ‘Sector Overview’ section of this year’s report sheds light on the economic and social conditions of media workers, particularly journalists, in the context of collective rights. You will find the current number of registered workers in the sector, the three factors that have been exerting pressure on journalists’ collective rights for a long time, data on unionisation in the media, and the latest information on the unionisation efforts of the TGS. In order to reveal the extent of poverty experienced by media workers and their economic and social conditions, we have included a study titled ‘Economic and Social Conditions Survey’ in our report.
One difference between this report and previous ones is that it includes letters sent to TGS by our imprisoned colleagues. These were written in prison by Elif Akgül, Ercüment Akdeniz, Yıldız Tar, Öznur Değer and Vedat Örüç. The texts revealing the professional cost of imprisoning a journalist can be read throughout the report under the heading ‘Letters from Prison’. In this year’s report, we also sought to contribute to the discussion on the burning issue facing online media with Prof. Dr. Ceren Sözeri Özdal’s article ‘Why Was Gazete Duvar Closed?’
