A journalist couple in Trabzon were detained overnight and questioned on suspicion of inciting public hatred and hostility after reporting remarks by a ruling-party lawmaker who thanked the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, and others involved in Turkey’s renewed peace process, the Cumhuriyet daily reported.
Hatice Aksoy, owner of the local news outlet Trabzon 360 Haber, and her husband, managing editor Muhsin Aksoy, said police took them to a station shortly after midnight on September 22. They were released at about 2 a.m. after giving statements with a lawyer present.
The journalists said police questioned them about the source of the report, why they published it and whether anyone had instructed them to do so. The couple said they had seen the story in the national press after the remarks recently resurfaced on social media, verified it and republished it without adding commentary.
The report concerned remarks made on August 12 by Suna Kepoğlu Ataman, a lawmaker from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) representing the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.
Speaking to İlke TV, Ataman thanked Erdoğan; Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a key Erdoğan ally; imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan; and a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) that has held talks with Öcalan at a prison on İmralı Island. She said, “May God bless them all,” for helping make that stage of the process possible.
The Aksoys said Ataman’s husband, Trabzon businessman and politician Atilla Ataman, called them at about 8 p.m. on September 21 after their report was published and accused them of deliberately targeting him. According to the journalists, he said he knew who had instructed them to publish the story and told them they would “pay the price” for it.
The journalists said that at about 11:15 p.m., roughly three hours after the phone call, two men they did not recognize appeared outside their home. They later learned the men were plainclothes police officers.
The couple said they were not shown a written detention order but were told that a prosecutor had ordered them to give statements. They filed a criminal complaint over the alleged threats after their release.
A court in Trabzon had ordered five pieces of social media content associated with Trabzon 360 Haber blocked and removed following a request from the Trabzon Provincial Police Department on September 21.
In its request to the court, the Trabzon Provincial Police Department claimed that the posts could constitute the offense of “inciting the public to hatred and hostility or degrading a section of the public” under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code. The court imposed the restrictions under Article 8/A of Turkey’s internet law on public-order grounds.
Ataman’s remarks came amid Turkey’s latest attempt to end its decades-long conflict with the PKK. The initiative began publicly after Bahçeli in October 2024 called on Öcalan to urge the group to disarm and dissolve. Öcalan issued such a call in February 2025 and the PKK subsequently announced that it would disband and end its armed campaign.
The PKK launched an armed insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
