A Turkish appeals court has upheld an access ban on the Baba Ocağı news website over its reporting on Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Batuhan Mumcu, the ANKA News Agency reported.
The İstanbul 5th Criminal Magistrate of Peace rejected several applications seeking to overturn the ban, reviewing them jointly. The website’s lawyer had appealed an earlier ruling by the İstanbul 4th Criminal Magistrate of Peace, which had also denied the request to remove the restriction.
The dispute stems from a December 18, 2025 ruling of the İstanbul 4th Criminal Magistrate of Peace that ordered the blocking of 177 news reports and social media posts. The decision targeted content concerning allegations of stock market manipulation that have recently put Mumcu at the center of public scrutiny.
Lawyers said blocking the entire site, instead of only the specific reports about Mumcu, violates freedom of expression and freedom of the press. They said that with the appeals court’s decision, all available domestic legal remedies had been exhausted and that they would file an individual application with Turkey’s Constitutional Court.
One of the applicants, Prof. Dr. Yaman Akdeniz from the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD), a press freedom watchdog, recalled that İFÖD’s own reporting announcing the original court order was also blocked under a court ruling dated January 16. He described the measures as politically motivated.
The case comes amid growing concerns over online censorship in Turkey. Turkish authorities blocked access to 740,624 domain names and 8,762 news reports in 2024, according to the Internet Censorship Report.
Turkey’s increasing use of digital censorship has been cited by press freedom monitors as a key factor in the country’s poor ranking in global media freedom indices.
The US-based democracy watchdog Freedom House’s “2025 Freedom on the Net” report placed Turkey among the five countries with the steepest long-term declines in internet freedom. The organization cited broad censorship practices and intensified digital controls over the past 15 years, giving Turkey a score of 31 out of 100, putting it in the bottom tier of the 72 countries assessed.
