A Turkish appeals court has upheld the prison sentence of journalist Ozan Kaplanoğlu, convicted of “disseminating terrorist propaganda” in his reporting on the 2018 protest of a military operation conducted by Turkey in Afrin, Syria, the Medyascope news website reported.
Kaplanoğlu, editor of the local Bursamuhalif.com news website in Bursa, was sentenced in June 2021 to one year, 10 months and 15 days in prison over the report, which covered a gathering of political parties and civil society groups who were protesting Turkey’s 2018 Afrin incursion.
Kaplanoğlu has faced multiple trials on charges of disseminating terrorist propaganda, with this being his third case. In 2017, while he had been released pending trial, he was detained again on allegations of spreading propaganda for the Turkish Peoples Liberation Party/Front (THKP/C), a Turkish Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group. In September 2019 he was sentenced to one year, six months and 20 days in prison.
Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched the offensive, dubbed “Operation Olive Branch,” in January 2018 to drive out Kurdish fighters affiliated with the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The group is considered an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
Kaplanoğlu was also briefly jailed on February 5 after a court reinstated a prior conviction of insulting then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. His conditional release had been revoked, but he was freed again after his lawyer successfully challenged the decision.
The 2013 Gezi Park protests erupted over government plans to demolish Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim district. They quickly turned into mass anti-government demonstrations that were violently suppressed by the government, leading to the death of 11 protestors due to the use of disproportionate force by the police. The crackdown is widely viewed as an early marker of Turkey’s authoritarian backsliding.
Several journalists, filmmakers and civil society figures were prosecuted and handed down lengthy prison sentences over their alleged role in the protests, including businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala, who was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to life in 2022 for allegedly trying to topple the government of President Erdoğan. Kavala has been held behind bars despite a European Court of Human Rights order for his release.
According to Expression Interrupted, a press freedom monitoring group, 27 journalists are currently behind bars in Turkey. The country’s deteriorating media landscape was further pointed out in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), where it was ranked 159th out of 180 nations.
