Sevan Nişanyan
Turkish Armenian writer Sevan Nişanyan was imprisoned in 2012 for a blog entry he wrote criticizing government attempts to ban criticism of the Prophet Muhammad. However, in July 2017,… More
Nedim Türfent
Kurdish reporter and poet Türfent was arrested in May 2016 and sentenced to 8 years in prison on terrorism charges. During pretrial interrogations, he was tortured and forced to… More
Deniz Zarakolu
The son of human rights activists, Zarakolu was first arrested in 2002 for a speech he gave at his mother's funeral. In 2011, he was arrested again in a… More
İlhan Sami Çomak
Kurdish poet Çomak was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison for membership in the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party. While in prison, he has published eight books… More
Ayşe Düzkan
On June 11, 2019, Düzkan was released after serving 18 months in Bakırköy prison in Istanbul. She was originally imprisoned in January 2018 on terrorism charges for her work… More
Edip Polat
A Kurdish writer, Polat has been jailed three times for writing in support of Kurdish self-determination, which authorities deemed to be “separatist propaganda,” even though many of his works… More
Bülent Şık
A writer, food engineer, and environmental activist, Şık was indicted in 2018 after he wrote articles discussing the results of a government study of pollution. In 2019, he was… More
Emre Soncan
Foreign military affairs correspondent and author Soncan was arrested in a purge of suspected followers of exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, who was blamed for the July 2016 attempted coup.… More
Mümtaz’er Türköne
Police detained Türköne, a columnist for the daily Zaman, as part of a purge of suspected Gülenists after the failed July 2016 coup. Türköne was sentenced in 2018 to… More
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