The Final Obstacle to Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Expression: Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code
The Freedom of the Press Report, prepared by the Turkish Journalists’ Union, has been published for the seventh time. The report provides a comprehensive overview of human rights violations targeting journalists and media organizations between April 2025 and April 2026.
In Turkey, we are once again marking World Press Freedom Day on May 3 amid mounting problems. In our country, which has slipped to 163rd place out of 180 countries in the global rankings, Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code (“Public Dissemination of Misleading Information”) has become a problem affecting all segments of society, particularly journalists, and press and freedom of expression have come under attack.
As the Turkish Journalists’ Union (TGS), we are sharing our 2025–2026 Press Freedom Report with the public for the seventh time on May 3, World Press Freedom Day. As in previous years, Turkish journalists are marking May 3 this year amid investigations, detentions, arrests, and judicial control measures, as well as deepening conditions of insecurity and poverty.
In our report, we sought to identify and document, in all their dimensions, the interventions targeting the press that took place between April 2025 and April 2026. As we do every year, we had to address numerous topics, including investigations, criminal and civil proceedings, decisions on individual complaints and judicial review, physical and verbal attacks against journalists and media organizations, and interventions targeting media organizations.
