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Turkish court sentences journalist to prison for "insulting Erdoğan"

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Thursday, May 1, 2025

A protest in Ankara on March 20
Image: Mocmuk.
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On Wednesday, a Turkish court sentenced Swedish journalist Joakim Medin to 11 months in prison for allegedly "insulting the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan". He also faces a second more severe charge of affiliation to a terrorist organisation, which implies a nine-year prison sentence. He appeared at a hearing before the court via videoconference from his prison cell, on April 30.

Prosecutors claimed that Medin was present at a 2023 rally in Stockholm where an effigy of Erdoğan was hung up by protesters, which he denied.

Medin, who writes for the newspaper Dagens ETC, was detained on March 27 upon arriving at Istanbul Airport to cover the protests in support of the city's mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who had been arrested the previous week on disputed corruption charges. In a letter written on April 12 from Marmara Prison, Medin said: "I have done nothing but journalism. It’s not something that I should be in prison, not in Turkey or in any country." The Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Maria Malmer Stenergard, stated that the country was working for bringing Medin home once again.

Both charges are often levelled against journalists who criticise the Turkish government. Press freedom in the country has experienced a sharp deterioration in recent years, with 57 journalists having been detained in 2024, 10 of whom were imprisoned, according to a report of the Stockholm Center for Freedom.

Organisations European Centre for Press and Media Freedom and Reporters Without Borders condemned the sentencing, the latter one deeming it "undemocratic", and called for Medin's release and the dropping of both charges against him.

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