A court in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday sentenced Kurdish journalist Perihan Kaya to more than 18 months in prison on terrorism-related charges in a retrial of her case, according to press freedom watchdog Expression Interrupted.
The Diyarbakır 10th High Criminal Court convicted Kaya, a former reporter for the pro-Kurdish Jin News Agency, in absentia of “membership in terrorist organization” and ruled that she would not benefit from a suspended sentence, citing a prior suspended sentence in another case and a subsequent conviction during the probation period.
Kaya has been living abroad since August 2022.
In an earlier ruling in 2021, the same court had sentenced Kaya to one year, three months in prison on charges of “disseminating terrorist propaganda” while acquitting her of “membership in a terrorist organization.” That decision was later overturned by the Diyarbakır Regional Court of Justice, which said the sentence was insufficient and that provisions on repeated offenses had not been taken into account.
Kaya was sentenced on Wednesday based on her alleged membership in the now-closed Free Journalists’ Association (ÖGD) andher attendance at events organized by the Democratic Society Congress (DTK). Her social media posts, phone calls with colleagues and testimony from secret witnesses were also cited as evidence in the case.
The ÖGD was closed by an emergency decree in November 2016, and a later request to reopen it was rejected in 2022 over alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies. The Democratic Society Congress (DTK), an entity closely linked to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), was found to be affiliated with the PKK in a 2020 ruling of Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals.
Prosecutors described the HDK as a “legal front organization” operating as an “alternative assembly” to the Turkish Parliament and alleged that it follows directives from the PKK.
Kaya, in denying all the charges had previously told the court that she had engaged solely in journalistic activities during her work in Diyarbakır.
Her lawyer argued that the evidence cited in the case consisted of news-related content and professional journalistic activities that could not be treated as criminal acts. He also pointed out that the social media account in question did not belong to Kaya and that the evidence had been obtained illegally.
Kaya’s case has prompted international attention. In 2025 the Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) awarded her its annual “Prize for the Protection of Journalists,” which honors a person or an organization who worked for the protection of journalists and for press freedom on the ground.
Turkey frequently brings terrorism-related charges against journalists and media workers, most commonly alleging links to the PKK.
Press freedom and human rights groups say such cases often rely on reporting activity, sources or published content rather than evidence of involvement in violence and are used to deter critical coverage of the Kurdish issue.
The Kurdish issue, a term prevalent in Turkey’s public discourse, refers to the demand for equal rights by the country’s Kurdish population and their struggle for recognition.
According to Expression Interrupted, a press freedom monitoring group, 28 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.
