Istanbul, September 15, 2026—Turkish authorities must release arrested journalist Selahattin Günday without delay and stop abusing the country’s laws to harass journalists and prevent them from doing their jobs, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
Günday
, a former broadcast reporter for the now closed Doğan News Agency (DHA), was
taken into custody
by Istanbul police on September 10 as part of a
newly reopened investigation
into the death of Turkish intelligence operative Kaşif Kozinoğlu in 2011.
On September 12, Günday was
arrested
on suspicion of exposing an intelligence operative and illegally obtaining personal data while reporting on Kozinoğlu in 2011, his lawyer Hüseyin Ersöz
told
local media.
Journalist Selahattin Günday (left) and his lawyer Hüzeyin Ersöz. (Screenshot: KRT/YouTube)
Camera operator İdris Tiftikçi, who worked with Günday at DHA, was also
taken into custody
on September10 but he was released pending trial under judicial control.
“The arrest of journalist Selahattin Günday defies logic: how could he be involved in any way in the death of Kaşif Kozinoğlu, a jailed man he never met?” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “The authorities must release Günday immediately and stop harassing the press.”
Kozinoğlu, who worked for the National Intelligence Agency ((MİT), was arrested in
March 2011
and died in prison in
November
that same year, just days before he was due to testify in the
Ergenekon trials,
a series of court cases against individuals, including
journalists
, accused by the authorities of plotting to overthrow the government in a military coup.
According to
reports in local media
, the accusations against Günday and Tiftikçi relate to their coverage of Kozinoğlu’s appearance at a court in Istanbul after his arrest, with authorities claiming they were the first to broadcast the news in violation of a law relating to publishing information about MİT or its officers.
Ersöz sai
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