Reporters Without Borders (RSF) logged 24 cases of journalists detained in Turkey in 2025, including YouTube hosts, television anchors and staff of a leading satirical magazine, under a barometer that RSF says records abuses linked to journalistic work, Turkish Minute reported.
The Paris-based watchdog’s “abuses in real time” database lists 24 Turkish journalists who were detained or put under house arrest between January and December 2025, with three still behind bars at year’s end. Most of the cases involved short-term detentions that lasted days or arrests that lasted weeks, often ending in release under judicial supervision.
The list includes high-profile television hosts and commentators such as Fatih Altaylı, a YouTube political talk show host detained since June 22, 2025, and Merdan Yanardağ, an anchor on opposition-leaning Tele1 who was taken into custody on October 26 and remains jailed. It also records the May 15 detention of editor Furkan Karabay and a series of short arrests of reporters and photojournalists covering protests or public events.
RSF’s database shows a wave of arrests clustered around demonstrations and politically sensitive reporting.
On March 25 police detained AFP photojournalist Yasin Akgül, freelance photographer Bülent Kılıç and reporters Zeynep Kuray and Ali Onur Tosun for one day while they were working.
In February and March Halk TV investigative journalist İsmail Saymaz and YouTube host Özlem Gürses were put under house arrest.
Editors and staff of Turkey’s best-known satirical weekly, LeMan, also appear in the RSF barometer. Editor-in-chief Aslan Özdemir was detained from July 12 to September 26, while fellow editor Zafer Aknar and staffers Cebrail Okcu, Doğan Pehlevan and Ali Yavuz were held during the same period, as pressure grows on critical satire in a media landscape dominated by pro-government outlets.
RSF says it excludes journalists if it cannot conclusively link their detention to their journalistic activity, a standard that keeps the official Turkey prison figure low even after a decade of terrorism trials of reporters.
The RSF barometer counts three journalists as still in prison in Turkey, while Expression Interrupted, a monitoring project run by the P24 Platform for Independent Journalism, reports 27 journalists still behind bars on terrorism or related charges, many of them Kurdish reporters or journalists from media outlets the government associates with the faith-based Gülen movement.
One of the journalists listed by Expression Interrupted and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) but omitted by RSF is Mehmet Baransu, a former reporter for the now-closed Taraf daily who has been jailed since 2015 on “state secrets” and terrorism charges tied to his reporting.
Others on the list are editor Hatice Duman, in prison since 2003, and former Samanyolu Media Group chief Hidayet Karaca, jailed since 2014.
Critics say that in the Turkish context, RSF’s approach sidelines many of the people most at risk.
Terrorism indictments against Kurdish reporters and journalists from outlets branded as Gülen-affiliated by the government often cite news stories, headlines, social media posts and contacts with sources as evidence of support for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or the Gülen movement.
Local groups argue that these broad charges are a way to criminalize reporting on Kurdish issues, corruption or the 2016 coup narrative, and that any methodology that treats such cases as non-journalistic understates the scale of the crackdown.
RSF’s new annual roundup says 67 journalists were killed and 503 detained worldwide in the 12 months to December 1, 2025, with most deaths caused by state armed forces or criminal groups.
Nearly half of those killed died in Gaza, where RSF says Israeli forces have killed close to 220 journalists since October 2023, and at least 65 of them were clearly targeted because of their work or died while reporting, making Gaza by far the deadliest place on earth for media workers in this period.
