Five journalists killed, 131 imprisoned, 77 convicted of “insulting the president” and hundreds prosecuted for their work, said Reporters Without Borders (RSF) presenting its damning assessment of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 10 years as Turkey’s president.

Over the past decade, RSF said, President Erdoğan has established a hyper-presidential system that has undermined press freedom and media pluralism. RSF’s damning evaluation highlights the scale of the crusade waged by the man who is due to continue as Turkey’s president until 2028 after winning a third term in May 2023.

“Independent journalism is now clearly in danger of extinction as a result of this oppressive decade. Exploitation of the judicial system and public broadcasting, and the stranglehold on media ownership and regulatory institutions, have jeopardised the right to news and information, without which the rule of law cannot exist. Turkey must awake from this nightmare and turn a new page. We call on the president to take swift action and to carry out in-depth reform to protect independent journalists and guarantee the right to information in the country,” said RSF’s representative in Turkey, Erol Önderoğlu.

Details from the RSF report include the following:

150 reporters attacked during Gezi protests: the start of impunity

Erdoğan’s authoritarian attitude and hostility towards journalists began before his reign as president. When Erdoğan was prime minister, the Gezi anti-government protests in Istanbul in the spring and summer of 2013 were marked by an unprecedented surge in violence against media professionals. From May to September 2013, more than 150 journalists were attacked by police with complete impunity in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. This crackdown foreshadowed the impunity that accompanied Erdoğan’s new authoritarian approach to governance. Only three journalists were compensated for the damage they suffered.

Over 85% of national media controlled by the government

Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) were already very influential when he became prime minister in 2002. Erdoğan proceeded to create a financial system that seized media companies struggling to repay their debts to the state, and ultimately allocated these outlets to private sector companies allied with the government. Today, more than 85% of private sector national media are controlled by companies that support the government or are bound to it by shared strategic interests.

Erdoğan’s grip on the media – which also includes close control over the state TV and radio broadcaster TRT and the National Broadcasting Council (RTÜK) – contributed to his third presidential election victory in May 2023, at the end of a campaign clearly tainted by biased media coverage.

Arrests and trials used to restrict reporting 

Judicial harassment is one of the government’s favourite methods to intimidate journalists and prevent media coverage of the state’s authoritarianism, corruption, political cronyism, or Kurdish issues, and to prevent investigative reporters from uncovering stories that could embarrass the government and its allies. Of the 131 journalists detained since Erdoğan became president in 2014, at least 40 have been convicted.

Turkey became the world’s biggest prison for journalists in 2018, during the state of emergency imposed after a coup attempt in July 2016. Mass arbitrary arrests were carried out across many media outlets, including the daily newspapers Cumhuriyet, Sözcü, Özgür Gündem, and Zaman.

Judicial harassment of the media is still widespread. Media professionals subjected to judicial proceedings leading to arrests in recent years have included investigative journalists, TV presenters, and determined reporters such as Tolga Sardan, Merdan Yanardag, Baris Pehlivan, Abdurrahman Gök, and Furkan Karabay.

The most common charges brought against media personnel include spreading “propaganda for a terrorist organisation” and “exposing a counter-terrorist official to the threat of terrorist organisations” under the terrorism law (TMK), or “insulting a public official,” “insulting the president,” and “denigrating state institutions” under the criminal code (TCK).

According to the tally kept by news site and RSF partner Bianet.org,, over the past 10 years, a total of 77 journalists have been fined or given prison sentences (in some cases suspended) for “insulting the president” in articles, editorials, or comments posted or shared on social media.

Erol Önderoğlu, RSF’s Turkey representative, is a co-defendant in a criminal case alongside fellow journalist Ahmet Nesin and human rights defender Sebnem Korur Fincanci, that has dragged on for more than eight years. They are charged with propaganda in favour of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for participating in a journalistic solidarity campaign in support of Özgür Gündem, a pro-Kurdish newspaper that was forcibly closed under the state of emergency in 2016. Their acquittals were overturned in October 2020 after being publicly criticised by Erdoğan.

The Erdoğan administration’s persecution of journalists recognises no borders. For years after fleeing abroad, journalists such as Erk Acarer, Hayko Bagdat, and Fehim Tastekin have been subjected to judicial proceedings or administrative reprisals in connection with their journalism.

Can Dündar, the former editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet (Republic), was personally threatened by Erdoğan, forced to flee into exile abroad and sentenced in absentia to 27 and a half years in prison for a 2015 story headlined “İşte Erdoğan’ın yok dediği silahlar” (“Here are the weapons that Erdoğan says do not exist”). Erdoğan responded: “The person who wrote this exclusive article will pay dearly. I won’t let him get away with it.”

Online platforms blocked

Social media platforms have also been censored by the Erdoğan administration. Instagram was rendered inaccessible on 2 August on the grounds of “catalog offenses” such as child abuse and drug use. The access ban, announced without any explanations, is based on Article 8 of the Internet Law, which allows content or websites to be made inaccessible on a number of grounds, including "pornography," "sale of products endangering health," "incitement to suicide" or "offence to the memory of the founder of the Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk." 

But the ban was imposed after Instagram restricted access to Erdoğan’s condolence messages for the death of the Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh. Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for three years beginning in 2017 over content and articles allegedly complicit with jihadist organisations in Syria. Twitter was blocked in March 2014 over audio recordings implicating Turkish politicians.

Five journalists killed

Turkey's media had been spared political assassinations since the murder in 2007 of Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist who founded and edited the dual-language weekly Agos. But five journalists have been murdered since Erdogan became president – three Syrian journalists who had fled the civil war that began in Syria in 2011 and two journalists located in the cities of Bursa and Kocaeli.

When Erdogan became president in 2014, Turkey was ranked 154th out of 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index. It fell to 165th in 2023, and ranks 158th in the 2024 Index.

Key figures from Erdogan's ten years as president:

●      Five journalists killed

●      131 journalists detained (for more than 48 hours), 40 of whom were convicted

●      77 journalists convicted of “insulting the president”

●      85% of national media controlled by the government

●     Three major social media platforms blocked (Instagram, Wikipedia, Twitter)