The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that Turkey violated the rights of veteran journalist Tuncer Çetinkaya by holding him in pretrial detention without sufficient justification for nearly two years over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.
The court found violations of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to liberty and security, and Article 10, which protects freedom of expression, saying Turkish courts failed to show reasonable suspicion or provide sufficient reasons for Çetinkaya’s detention.
The court held in its ruling that the evidence cited by Turkish authorities did not amount to plausible suspicion of criminal activity, finding that both the initial and continued detention violated the right to liberty and security.
The court said the evidence relied on by Turkish authorities included Çetinkaya’s lawful journalistic work at media outlets, a published article on a matter of public interest and social media posts criticizing the appointment of trustees to the now-shuttered Zaman daily. It also included possession of books by Fethullah Gülen, the late US-based cleric whose teachings inspired the Gülen movement, a Bank Asya account, a US visa, travel to the United States and Facebook connections with co-defendants who were also journalists.
The court further found Çetinkaya’s detention interfered with freedom of expression because the authorities relied on protected journalistic work rather than sufficiently substantiated criminal grounds.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Çetinkaya, former journalist and regional bureau chief of the Zaman newspaper in Antalya province, was arrested in the weeks following the 2016 coup attempt and later convicted on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.
He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison by an Antalya court in 2018. His conviction was later upheld on appeal in 2019 and confirmed by the Supreme Court of Appeals in 2021.
Çetinkaya was released on April 24, 2018, for health reasons, pending the appeal process. After his release, he fled to Germany.
In his application to the Strasbourg court, Çetinkaya argued that he was detained solely for journalistic activities that did not constitute evidence of criminal intent or membership in a terrorist organization and that domestic courts failed to provide sufficient reasoning for both his arrest and continued pretrial detention.
The court ordered Turkey to pay Çetinkaya 16,250 euros in non-pecuniary damages and 4,406 euros in costs and expenses.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted of alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for over 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.