Turkey’s Constitutional Court found that the right to freedom of expression had been violated in 76 cases during the first half of 2026, according to newly released court statistics, adding to a growing number of rulings on free speech in the country, Turkish Minute reported.
The court received 29,605 individual applications between January and June and concluded 17,792 cases during the same period.
A single application can involve more than one constitutional right, meaning that the number of rights violations does not necessarily match the number of cases concluded. Excluding violations of the right to be tried within a reasonable period of time, the court found at least one constitutional right violation in 485 applications during the first six months of the year.
The latest ruling brings the total number of freedom of expression violations identified by the court to 4,972 since individual applications became available in 2012. Across all categories the court has issued 85,004 violation rulings over the same period.
The court has also found 1,762 violations of the right to hold meetings and demonstrations, 1,227 violations of the prohibition of ill-treatment, 487 violations of labor union rights and 347 violations of the right to life.
The latest figures come as journalists, politicians, human rights defenders and social media users in Turkey continue to face criminal investigations and prosecutions over their reporting, public statements and online posts. Press freedom and rights organizations have long argued that counterterrorism legislation, criminal defamation provisions and the country’s disinformation law are increasingly used to prosecute critics and discourage dissent.
Turkey introduced the Constitutional Court’s individual application system in 2012, which allows people to ask the country’s highest court to review alleged violations of constitutional rights after all other domestic legal remedies have been exhausted. The mechanism has become one of the country’s main legal avenues for challenging restrictions on fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and assembly and fair trial guarantees.
