Alican Uludağ, a reporter for the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s (DW) Turkish service, was detained late yesterday for allegedly "spreading disinformation" and "insulting the president" over his reporting and social media posts about the criminal case concerning the 2016 İstanbul Atatürk Airport bombing carried out by ISIS, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office announced.
Authorities conducted a search of his residence before transferring him to İstanbul by road for questioning.
Referred to the courthouse today, Uludağ was formally arrested for "insulting the president."
Reporting on court verdict deemed disinformation
Uludağ, in a Dec 2024 report for Now TV, revealed that the Court of Cassation had overturned the convictions of six defendants sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment 46 times each, as well as 2,604 years in prison.
The İstanbul 13th Heavy Penal Court had convicted six individuals of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and “premeditated murder,” while sentencing a seventh person to 12 years for “membership in a terrorist organization.”
The Court of Cassation found that the court had imposed excessive penalties. It argued that three defendants should have been convicted of "membership in a terrorist organization," one for financing terrorism, and another for aiding the attack. Following the ruling, six of the seven defendants were released on Dec 12, 2024.
After Uludağ’s report aired, the Directorate of Communications’ Center for Combating Disinformation acknowledged the releases but claimed the decision did not apply to the main perpetrators of the attack, therefore considering Uludağ's reporting "disinformative."
Condemnation from RSF
The Turkish representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Erol Öncerdoğlu, condemned Uludağ’s detention. “At a time when the judiciary has bowed to political pressure, the detention of journalist Alican Uludağ shows that media freedom in Turkey is facing an even more difficult future,” he said. “He was taken into custody simply because his investigations and criticism were uncomfortable. That’s all.”
BIA Media Monitoring Reports
Over a journalism career spanning nearly two decades, Uludağ has primarily worked as a judicial reporter, focusing on human rights violations, corruption cases, and high-profile trials.
His work has earned several accolades, including the Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Award from the Contemporary Journalists Association in 2019, the Political Reporting Award from the Turkish Journalists’ Association in 2020, and the Raif Badawi Award for Courageous Journalism from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in 2021. (HA/VK)
