A Turkish prosecutor has indicted two Kurdish journalists for reporting on torture allegations against a gendarmerie commander, accusing them of “targeting a public official,” the Mezopotamya News Agency (MA) reported on Monday.
Pro-Kurdish JINNEWS agency editor Öznur Değer and former editor-in-chief of the Yeni Yaşam daily Osman Akın had published a July 16, 2024 report detailing a complaint accusing Maj. Kamil Aksoy, a gendarmerie battalion commander, of torture during a raid on a house in the Eskihisar neighborhood of southeastern Mardin province.
The prosecutor argued in the indictment that the report did not fall under the protection of press freedom. The Mardin 2nd High Criminal Court accepted the indictment, and the first hearing is scheduled for February 17, 2026.
Değer was recently sentenced to more than six years in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization, referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The ruling is now before the Supreme Court of Appeals.
She was also previously sentenced to more than three years in prison for “repeatedly disseminating propaganda for a terrorist organization,” over her social media posts about Cihan Bilgin and Nazım Daştan, two Kurdish journalists who were killed in a Turkish drone attack in northern Syria in December 2024.
The indictment comes amid a broader crackdown on the pro-Kurdish media in Turkey, where authorities have blocked access to news outlets and prosecuted journalists on terrorism-related charges. Press freedom advocates say these measures aim to silence independent reporting on Kurdish issues and military operations in Syria.
According to Expression Interrupted, a press freedom monitoring group, 27 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.
