On a damp October morning in Istanbul, the news cycle was dominated by politics and diplomacy, but for Turkey’s independent journalists the day began with a familiar question: would today bring a summons, a detention, a charge? In recent years, that fear has become a daily reality, as Turkish authorities have turned a vaguely worded disinformation law into a weapon against the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a global press freedom group, reported on October 5, 2026 that authorities are using Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code to repeatedly detain and arrest journalists for doing their jobs. The law makes it a crime to publicly spread false information about the country’s internal and external security, public order, or general health, in a manner capable of disturbing public peace and with the intention of creating anxiety, fear, or panic. But the wording is so broad that almost any reporting the government dislikes can be reclassified as disinformation. This is not an accident, CPJ argues. It is a deliberate strategy, part of a global pattern in which governments use legal systems to criminalize legitimate journalism, a practice known as lawfare. For Turkey’s reporters, the consequences are deeply personal: months in pretrial detention, careers interrupted, families destabilized, and the constant fear that a single story, a single tweet, or a single video could send them to prison. Turkey’s press freedom environment has been deteriorating for years. The number of jailed journalists has fallen from a peak of 84 in 2016 to 14 in September 2026, but that figure is dangerously misleading. Many journalists move in and out of jail, spend months awaiting trial, or live under travel bans and judicial supervision, all while the threat of prosecution hangs over their heads. The disinformation law has made it easier than ever for authorities to silence voices they do not control.
At the center of this crisis is Article 217/A, a single paragraph inserted into the Turkish Penal Code in October 2022. It states that anyone who publicly disseminates false information regarding the country’s internal and external security, public order, or general health, in a manner capable of disturbing public peace and with the sole intent of creating anxiety, fear, or panic among the public, shall be sentenced to one to three years in prison. The penalty can be increased by half for people who run anonymous social media accounts or act under the orders of criminal groups. The law’s language contains no clear definition of what counts as false information, who decides what is false, or how to measure the capacity to disturb public peace. This vagueness is what makes it so dangerous. CPJ’s Turkish representative, Özgür Öğret, said the law was “designed to be a one-size-fits-all tool to prosecute journalists for reporting information that the authorities would rather the public did not know.” He warned that it fits into a global trend of authoritarian governments criminalizing news they dislike by labeling it disinformation and prosecuting the journalists who report it. CPJ documented 16 arrests and detentions for spreading disinformation in Turkey between January and September 2026 alone. Those cases involved 14 journalists, two of whom were detained or arrested twice, and two of whom remained in jail as of mid-September. An independent data journalism platform, Veriler Ne Diyor, estimated in April that at least 83 journalists had been charged 114 times under the disinformation law since it came into effect on October 18, 2022. Behind these statistics are ordinary people doing extraordinary work: a reporter covering a corruption scandal, a video journalist documenting police violence, an opposition writer questioning an official statement. None of their reporting caused fear or panic among the public, according to CPJ’s monitoring. Yet they were treated as criminals.
The Turkish government has defended the law from the beginning. When the legislation was first proposed in April 2022, journalists, lawyers, and opposition politicians warned that its vague language would be used against the press. The ruling AK Party dismissed those concerns, arguing that disinformation could destabilize society. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave a speech in May 2022 in which he described “digital fascism” as a threat preventing people from accessing accurate and unbiased news. He particularly criticized social media platforms, saying they were devoid of self-regulation, oversight, rules, and ethical values, and posed serious risks to all societies. The bill’s authors wrote in its introduction that the change was designed to protect Turkish citizens’ rights online while combating disinformation and illegal content produced by false names and accounts. They pointed to regulations in the United States and European countries, including Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, as proof that Turkey was following international trends. A day after the bill passed, Hakan Çavuşoğlu, chair of parliament’s Human Rights Inquiry Committee, met with press freedom groups including CPJ and insisted that the disinformation law would improve freedom of speech because people would base their opinions on verified facts. He promised that no journalists would be imprisoned under the law. That promise has proved hollow. The vagueness that critics warned about was not a drafting error; it was the point. As press freedom groups said at the time, putting such a law in the hands of a politicized judiciary would expose journalists and ordinary internet users to criminal sanctions and increase censorship and self-censorship in a media landscape already under severe strain. In the years since, those fears have played out exactly as predicted.
Journalists caught in the machinery of the disinformation law describe a nightmare of legal limbo. İsmail Arı, a reporter for the leftist daily BirGün, was detained on March 21, 2026 on suspicion of spreading disinformation. He spent two and a half months in pretrial detention before being released in early June, pending the outcome of his trial. At his trial, Arı challenged the accusation that his reporting had caused “anxiety, fear, or panic,” as the law requires. “I never saw any chaos erupting nor people succumbing to fear, panic, or anxiety regarding the news stories of myself or anyone else arrested and prosecuted due to this accusation,” he told CPJ. Arı said authorities were using the disinformation law instead of relying on narrower charges like “insulting the president,” which can bring up to four years in prison, or “provoking the people into animosity and hatred,” which carries one to three years. The disinformation law is broader and easier to apply. He also said it seemed to target journalists active on social media, particularly those who identify with the opposition. “I believe that the authorities wanted to rupture this opposition influence in social media and either punish or intimidate the influential names and journalists with this law,” he said. His experience is not unusual. Some journalists are released quickly after questioning; others are sent to prison while investigations continue. Those arrested can spend months in pretrial detention, and even after release they may wait months for trial, then months more if the case moves between local and appellate courts. If they appeal a conviction, the process can drag on for years. Even when cases are dropped or end in acquittal, the months of fear, separation from family, and professional uncertainty leave lasting wounds. Veteran journalist and opposition politician Utku Çakırözer, a former parliamentary deputy and now deputy chair responsible for media in the opposition New Party, told CPJ that the law is being “enforced maliciously.” He repeated the questions that critics raised before the law existed: “What is disinformation? What does it mean to publicly spread it? According to who?” The government, he said, is taking steps at every chance to suppress, intimidate, and censor criticism.
Lawyers who defend journalists see the law as an unconstitutional assault on the public’s right to know. Elif Ergin, a lawyer for the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, told CPJ that the disinformation law is vague, unconstitutional, and designed to interfere with the press. She argued that it violates the constitutional right to be informed by making it easier to prosecute journalists for doing their jobs. Even journalists who escape arrest are obstructed. Some are held in police detention for days. Others are placed under judicial control, requiring them to regularly report to police stations. Still others are given foreign travel bans, cutting them off from international reporting and support. Ergin described a broader breakdown of legal principles. “Unfortunately, today we see that in our country actions are no longer guided by legal certainty or written law, and there is a departure from legal principles,” she said. “And it should be said that the journalists suffer the most due to the judiciary being run like this.” Her words capture a sense of betrayal: the law was supposed to protect the public, but instead it is being used to shield the powerful from accountability. There have been attempts to fight back. Çakırözer has presented a bill to Turkey’s parliament to repeal the disinformation law. He expects it to be put to a vote by the end of the next parliamentary year, which began on October 1, 2026. He believes opposition parties will act in unity to dissolve the law. But even if repeal succeeds, the damage will not be quickly undone. Reporters have been jailed, reputations smeared, families broken, and a generation of journalists has learned to think twice before publishing a story that might offend the government.
CPJ’s recommendations are clear and urgent. Turkey should release all journalists arrested under Article 217/A, drop all pending charges against journalists arising from their reporting or commentary, repeal Article 217/A in its entirety, and bring all legislation regulating freedom of expression into conformity with Turkey’s international obligations. These are not abstract demands from a distant organization; they are concrete steps needed to stop the destruction of independent journalism in Turkey. The disinformation law was created in the name of public order, but it has become a tool for punishing truth. The journalists caught in its net did not spread panic; they asked difficult questions, reported inconvenient facts, and tried to keep the public informed. Some have paid for that with months of their lives. Around the world, lawfare is becoming one of the most effective ways for governments to silence critics without resorting to crude censorship. Turkey’s experience shows how devastating it can be when the legal system itself becomes the weapon. A society that cannot tolerate honest journalism will eventually lose the ability to know itself. Repealing this law would be a first step toward restoring trust, not only in Turkey’s press, but in the possibility of democracy itself. For the journalists still waiting in courtrooms and prison cells, that step cannot come soon enough.