Veteran Turkish columnist and political scientist Ahmet Turan Alkan, who spent nearly two years in prison over his writings during a post-coup crackdown on the media in Turkey, died on Wednesday at the age of 72 in Bursa province.
Alkan was among dozens of journalists targeted in the aftermath of a July 15, 2016 coup attempt, as Turkish authorities launched a sweeping crackdown on the media. He was detained on July 27 and arrested on July 31 on terrorism-related charges, with his published columns in the now-shuttered Zaman daily treated as evidence. The newspaper had been put under state trusteeship and was later shut down by an emergency decree over its alleged affiliation with the faith-based Gülen movement.
Following the coup attempt, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan immediately accused the Gülen movement, inspired by the late US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, of orchestrating the plot and significantly expanded an already underway crackdown on the movement’s supporters.
Erdoğan’s campaign against the movement began after corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as members of his family and inner circle, which he dismissed as a conspiracy, and formally designated it as a terrorist organization in May 2016. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Alkan remained behind bars for 709 days before his first verdict, a period during which he repeatedly denied the charges and argued that his prosecution criminalized dissenting opinion rather than any act of violence.
On July 6, 2018, after spending 23 months in prison, the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court sentenced Alkan to almost nine years in prison on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization.” He was acquitted of charges related to involvement in the coup attempt and released pending appeal.
The conviction was upheld by an appeals court in 2019 but overturned two years later by the Supreme Court of Appeals, which ruled that the case had not been sufficiently examined.
In a retrial concluded in November 2022, Alkan was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on reduced charges of aiding an armed terrorist organization of which he was not a member and was released due to time served.
In his final court appearance Alkan delivered a defiant defense, rejecting the accusations as politically motivated, telling judges that his prosecution was based solely on his writing and amounted to punishment for dissent rather than any involvement in violence.
“Everyone knows that the claims are just pretexts,” Alkan told the court. “The reason why I am here is what I wrote on the December 17-25 [corruption investigations]. There is no evidence for the charges against me.”
He described his detention as an act of political revenge and said he would not apologize for his views, declaring, “I cannot lick the knife that cuts my throat … do not expect an apology from me.”
Born in Sivas in 1954, Alkan entered Ankara University’s faculty of political science in 1972 and graduated in 1977. He began his academic career at Cumhuriyet University in 1985, where he completed his master’s degree and doctorate and became a faculty member in the public administration department, continuing his academic work until 2008.
He began his journalism career in 1974 and began writing regular columns from 1989. For more than two decades he contributed to the Zaman newspaper, establishing himself as a prominent and influential voice in the Turkish media.
Since a state of emergency was declared on July 20, 2016, some 200 media outlets were shut down by emergency decrees. The main targets of the media closures have been media outlets affiliated with the Gülen movement as well as pro-Kurdish and far-left outlets.
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.
