A Turkish court has released four staff members of the LeMan satirical magazine who were jailed over a cartoon deemed insulting to religious values, the Diken news website reported.
Managing editors Zafer Aknar and Aslan Özdemir, graphic designer Cebrail Okçu and company director Ali Yavuz were freed under judicial supervision, journalist Ceylan Sever said on X on Friday. Cartoonist Doğan Pehlevan remains in pretrial detention.
The case stems from a cartoon published in the June 26 issue of LeMan that prosecutors said insulted religious values.
The LeMan cartoon showed two men named Muhammad and Moses greeting each other above a bombed city. The illustration sparked outrage among religious and conservative circles in İstanbul and attracted condemnation from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and senior government officials.
Separately, a court ordered the confiscation of LeMan’s June 26 issue and imposed a nationwide ban on access to the magazine’s website and X account.
The magazine said the illustration was a political critique of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, not a depiction of religious figures. Its staff have vigorously denied any link between an illustration published in the magazine and Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
Following the public backlash and the attack on the magazine’s İstanbul office by a group armed with sticks and stones, five staff members were arrested.
Those jailed were Aknar, Özdemir, Okçu, Yavuz and Pehlevan. Prosecutors also issued an arrest warrant for Editor-in-Chief Mehmet Tuncay Akgün, who is abroad.
An indictment accepted by an İstanbul court accuses Aknar, Özdemir, Okçu, Yavuz and Akgün of “openly inciting hatred and enmity,” a charge that carries a sentence of up to four years.
Pehlevan faces a separate charge of “repeatedly inciting hatred and enmity through the press,” for which prosecutors are seeking up to seven-and-a-half years in prison.
The first hearing is scheduled for November 14.
Press freedom advocates warn that the case illustrates a broader pattern of repression against independent media in Turkey, where journalists often face prosecution for critical reporting or satire.
Turkey ranks 159th out of 180 countries in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in May.