An Istanbul court yesterday Tuesday sentenced Turkish journalist Zafer Arapkirli, a commentator for the opposition BirGün newspaper, to serve two and a half years in prison for “spreading misleading information,” non-governmental organizations and the media outlet where he works said.
Mr. Arapkirli was put on trial for comments he made via X regarding the much-vaunted conflict in Syria following the overthrow, in December 2024, of then-President Bashar al-Assad.
His reports mainly referred to the long-running clashes between Assad supporters and forces aligned with the new Syrian de facto authorities in towns and villages with a predominantly Alawite population.
Turkey, which provided support for the rebel assault that toppled former President Assad, has since maintained very close ties with the new authority in Syria under President Ahmed al-Sharraf.
Addressing the bench, Mr. Arapirli said he was not even going to defend himself against the charges against him, which he called unsubstantiated: “Here, in the presence of the prosecutor, I want to denounce a much more serious crime: that public opinion is being plunged into deep darkness,” he said, according to the NGO Association for the Study of Media and Law (Medya ve Hukuk Çalışmaları Derneği, MLSA).
The court acquitted him of the second charge against him, that of “inciting hatred”, BirGün reported.
Erol Enteroglu, an official of the NGO Reporters sans frontières (RSF) in Turkey, criticised the verdict, saying that the aim was “to deprive a journalist with a 42-year career of his social role”.
“Journalism cannot cease to be a dangerous profession as long as the instrumentalization of justice” in Turkey is not ended, he added.
During a telephone interview with French News Agency, Mr. Arapkirli said he would appeal the court’s decision, although sentences of three years or less are rarely enforced in Turkey. However, they generally mean that convicts must appear in subsequent court proceedings and carry prohibitive costs for lawyers and court fees.
Asked what the court’s decision means, he replied that the Turkish authorities “are trying to obstruct our work, but our resistance will continue no matter what.”
He spoke of “an attempt to tie our hands, to intimidate us”, a “form of repression”
“These are practices common in repressive regimes. But we will try to overcome them thanks to solidarity,” the journalist added.
Meanwhile, in another case, a court acquitted journalist Sule Aiden, but sentenced three of her colleagues to serve prison sentences for comments made in a 2024 television broadcast on the opposition Halk TV network regarding Turkey-Israel trade exchanges.
Journalist Timur Soikan was sentenced to serve 10 months in prison for “breach of confidentiality” while Murat Airel and Baris Pehlivan were sentenced to serve one year and three months each for “spreading misleading information”, MLSA said.
In 2022, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had pushed through and secured the approval of a controversial law that carries penalties of up to three years in prison for the crime of spreading “misleading” information.
The so-called “disinformation” law – which has been repeatedly denounced as a law aimed at “censorship” by critics of Turkish President Erdogan – extended the scope of previous media provisions to also include publications on the internet, especially on social networking sites.
The United Nations had at the time called on Ankara to guarantee full respect for freedom of expression, noting that the law left wide room for abuse.
The NGO RSF, which denounces the “suppression of the right to information” in Turkey, places the country 159th out of a total of 180 in its press freedom ranking, between Pakistan and Venezuela.
