A Turkish court on Thursday handed down a five-month suspended sentence to journalist Tolga Şardan for publicly insulting the state’s judicial organs in an article reporting on alleged corruption in the judiciary.
According to the T24 news website, the İstanbul 2nd Court of First Instance acquitted Şardan of a separate charge of publicly disseminating misleading information.
The case stemmed from an October 2023 article in which Şardan revealed the existence of a report by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) detailing allegations of corruption, nepotism and other irregularities within the judiciary.
In the article Şardan said the MİT report was submitted to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He was detained in November 2023 and held in pretrial detention for five days.
Press freedom advocates say the case reflects Turkey’s continued use of criminal charges, including insult and disinformation offenses, to pressure journalists reporting on politically sensitive issues.
According to Expression Interrupted, a press freedom monitoring group, 26 journalists are currently behind bars in Turkey. The country’s deteriorating media landscape was further pointed out in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), where it was ranked 163rd out of 180 nations.
