A Turkish court on Tuesday handed down a one-year suspended sentence to journalist Barış Terkoğlu over reports he published alleging that a chief public prosecutor exerted pressure on judges in a case involving İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Bianet news website reported.
The İstanbul 2nd Court of First Instance sentenced Terkoğlu to one year, 15 days in prison on conviction of “defamation through the press,” ruling that the sentence would be suspended, meaning he will not serve time unless he commits a similar offense within the next two years.
The case stemmed from a complaint filed by İstanbul’s then-chief public prosecutor for Anatolia İsmail Uçar. The complaint concerned three reports Terkoğlu published in November 2022 and January 2023 about a controversial “insult” case against İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
In December 2022 İmamoğlu, a senior member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was sentenced to more than two years in prison and banned from politics after being convicted of insulting members of Turkey’s Supreme Election Board (YSK) in comments following the annulment of his 2019 win in local elections. An appeals court later upheld the conviction, and the case is now pending before Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals.
In his defense Terkoğlu argued that his reporting was based on verifiable facts, saying the judge who presided over the case, Hüseyin Zengin, had himself indicated he was under pressure. The court rejected his lawyer’s request to call Judge Zengin as a witness. According to Terkoğlu, prosecutor Uçar acknowledged in an official letter he sent to the Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) to report alleged bribery that certain judicial decisions taken at the Anatolia Courthouse were made upon suggestion.
Terkoğlu was also briefly detained in December on accusations of “publicly disseminating misleading information” for a video report involving a prosecutor and was released under judicial supervision, including a ban on international travel.
İmamoğlu was detained on March 19, 2025, and arrested days later on corruption charges. He had been named his party’s presidential candidate for the 2028 general election. His arrest, widely seen as targeting the biggest political rival of longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sparked Turkey’s largest protests in a decade.
Journalists critical of the government or allied political parties have faced increasing scrutiny under laws criminalizing “disinformation,” “insulting public officials” and “terrorist propaganda.” Dozens of reporters remain in prison, and many more are the subjects of ongoing investigations.
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.
