Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the pretrial detention of journalist Kazım Güleçyüz over a social media post expressing condolences following the death of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen violated his rights to liberty and security as well as freedom of expression.
According to the Bold Medya news website, the court unanimously found Güleçyüz, who was editor-in-chief of the Yeni Asya newspaper at the time, did not praise or encourage violence in his post. It also said the prosecutors and the lower court had failed to provide sufficient grounds for his pretrial detention.
Güleçyüz spent 57 days in pretrial detention before being released pending trial and was handed down a suspended 15-month sentence in March 2025 on conviction of disseminating “terrorist propaganda” in the post.
The court awarded Güleçyüz 325,000 Turkish lira (about $6,900) in non-pecuniary damages for the rights violations and found no need for a retrial.
He was arrested on October 24, 2024, for his condolence message for Gülen, who died at a US hospital on October 20 at the age of 83.
The Turkish government has targeted Gülen and his followers since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as well as some members of his family and inner circle. Erdoğan dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy, and his government designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying the crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the attempted coup or any terrorist activity.
Former lawmaker Mustafa Yeneroğlu said on X that the Constitutional Court had reached a legal conclusion that both the prosecutor who initiated the investigation and the court that ordered Güleçyüz’s pretrial detention should have recognized from the outset.
Yeneroğlu criticized the lack of accountability for judicial officials responsible for such rulings that unlawfully deprive people of their liberty.
