An İstanbul on Thursday court ruled to acquit former Cumhuriyet daily court reporter Canan Coşkun of charges of insulting the president, the T24 news website reported on Thursday.
Coşkun was tried over her report on the arrest of journalists Can Dündar and Erdem Gül titled “Erdoğan ordered, journalists arrested,” which triggered her prosecution for allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The court found that the act did not correspond to the law invoked in the charges.
In her defense Coşkun said she merely wrote the report and sent it over to her editors and that she had no control over the headline.
According to a press freedom report released by the Council of Europe, Turkey is the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and one of the worst performers in the world in terms of freedom of speech and media.
The country ranked 157th out of 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders.