Media advocacy organisation condemns Ismail Ari’s arrest on charges of spreading ‘misinformation’, saying his only ‘crime’ was practising journalism.
A Turkish court jailed Ismail Ari, an investigative reporter with BirGun daily newspaper, on Monday on charges of “spreading misinformation”, a common charge made by the Turkish government to jail journalists.
The prosecutors’ office demanded Ari’s arrest even before his interrogation; the court ordered his arrest and sent him to Sincan prison in Ankara on Monday after police detained him on Saturday.
“The arrest of journalist İsmail Arı, who has exposed many truths about corruption, child abuse, religious sects and profiteering, once again shows how much the government fears a free press,” Baris Altintas, co-chair of the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA, told BIRN.
Ari’s work focuses on corruption, the judiciary, politics and religious groups. He faced several investigations in 2025 after his critical investigation into a religious sect linked to the Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
BirGun, one of the few remaining independent daily newspapers in Turkey, reported that Ari was arrested over an investigative story revealing that historical and cultural heritage sites were designated by a presidential decree as the location for a religious high-school dormitory whose graduates include President Erdogan.
Altintas said that Ari’s only “crime” is practicing journalism.
“Journalism is not a crime, and Ismail Ari and other journalists must be released immediately,” Altintas said, recalling that other journalists, including Deutsche Welle reporter Alican Uludag, were recently arrested for “spreading misinformation” as a result of their journalistic work.
Ari has been a recipient of Turkey’s prestigious Ugur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Award.
The latest Press Freedom Index issued by the media watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, ranked Turkey in 159th place out of 180 countries in 2025.
“With authoritarianism gaining ground in Turkey [under President Erdogan], media pluralism is being called into question. All possible means are used to undermine critics,” RSF said.
Source: BalkanInsight
