Istanbul, July 8, 2026—Turkey should put an end to arbitrary detentions and arrests of journalists following the recent detaining of at least 11 members of the press ahead of the
NATO summit
in Ankara, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
Three of the journalists who were taken into police custody in Turkey between June 23 and July 7 remained behind bars at the time of publishing, with two of them having been arrested. Some were apprehended in the scope of
sweeping preliminary police operations
ahead of the July 7-8 summit, while others appear to be isolated cases.
“Whether or not the NATO summit is being used as an excuse, the detention or arrest in Turkey of nearly a dozen journalists in the past two weeks is unacceptable and unexplainable,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should release all remaining journalists behind bars who were imprisoned for doing their jobs, reform the disinformation law, and stop these arbitrary detentions and arrests.”
The 2022
disinformation law
dictates that anyone found guilty of
publicly spreading false information
in order to cause concern, fear, or panic will face a sentence of one to three years in prison. While supporters of the legislation at the time it was introduced offered
reassurances
that the law would not be used against journalists, it has since
become
one
of
the
most
frequently
used
laws
against
the
media
.
The detentions and arrests include:
Doğa Baskan
, a reporter for the leftist daily Evrensel, was
arrested
by a court in Ankara on June 25 with the suspicion of “publicly spreading disinformation,” due to a story that was published online without editorial approval and immediately taken down. She was
released
pending trial on June 26.
Ali Çağatay
, a radio host for Sputnik Turkey, the Turkish arm of Russian state-funded news outlet Sputnik, was
detained
on June 25 and
arrested
pending trial in Istanbul on June 27, with the s
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