The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Thursday called on Turkish authorities to refrain from challenging the appeals of two journalists who were convicted for their reporting and social media posts.
The journalists, Asuman Aranca and Öznur Değer, were both sentenced on October 21 in separate cases, CPJ said in a statement.
“The guilty verdicts for JİN News director Öznur Değer and T24 reporter Asuman Aranca are disappointing but unfortunately not unusual,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Reporting about an outlawed group or a political murder trial should not be a crime. The authorities should not fight the appeals of Değer and Aranca, and must stop prosecuting journalists for doing their jobs.”
Aranca was handed down a suspended 10-month sentence for publishing details from an expert report on the controversial murder of Turkish far-right leader Sinan Ateş. Aranca, who received three journalism awards for the report, was convicted of “violating the confidentiality” of the investigation.
Değer was sentenced to more than three years in prison for her social media posts. about Cihan Bilgin and Nazım Daştan, two Kurdish journalists who were killed in an attack in northern Syria in December 2024. The court convicted her of “repeatedly disseminating propaganda for a terrorist organization,” referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
CPJ said it had requested comment from prosecutors in İstanbul and Mardin but received no response.
According to Expression Interrupted, a press freedom monitoring group, 28 journalists are currently behind bars in Turkey. The country’s deteriorating media landscape was further pointed out in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), where it was ranked 159th out of 180 nations.
