In parallel with worsening media freedoms and women rights in Turkey, online abuse of female reporters is rising, fuelled by a climate of impunity.
Nese Idil says the level of abuse she sometimes receives online amounts to “sexual assault”.
Last year, the Istanbul-based freelance journalist was targeted by far-right extremists when a member of the National Movement Party, MHP, in Bursa, northwestern Turkey, published her address on social media in response to her online posts about a football match between Bursa’s local side, Bursaspor, and Amedspor, from the southeast.
Idil, 34, was inundated with online threats and sexist comments; some contained photos of guns and bullets. Her treatment by Turkish authorities has been little better; in February 2024, Idil was handed a 15-month prison sentence for her social media posts about the war in neighbouring Syria.
And she is far from alone. In fact, the abuse and pressure women journalists in Turkey are subjected to is often worse than that faced by their male colleagues.
“Attacks against women [reporters] target their bodies,” Idil told BIRN. “This doesn’t happen with men. Even if we write the exact same thing as our male colleagues, we are subjected to threats of sexual assault; the issue is linked to our womanhood. Being a woman makes these situations all the more unsettling.”
Climate of impunity
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, have rolled back media freedoms in Turkey, which now ranks 159th out of 180 countries on the 2025 Press Freedom Index compiled by the watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
According to Bia.net’s latest media monitoring, just in the first three months of this year, 13 journalists were assaulted, 22 were detained and 55 journalists were placed under investigation.
The Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA, says that 72 per cent of Turkish journalists face digital violence.
Idil blames a climate of impunity.
“We file criminal complaints, and sometimes we do see results, but the fact that many perpetrators cannot be identified due to anonymity is a major problem,” she told BIRN. “Even when there are clear threats and insults, many cases are dismissed; I even saw a case in which someone said, ‘I will come to your door and kill you,’ and it was still ruled there were insufficient grounds for prosecution.”
“Considering that our laws often fail to function even in cases of physical violence, I’m not sure how realistic it is to expect effective regulation for digital abuse.”
Another female reporter, Rengin Temucin from Cumhuriyet newspaper, said she too has received threats and insults by email.
One sender used “threatening and insulting” language against women journalists who reported on femicide in Turkey, she said, and “expressed a desire to kill the journalists and those who gave [the victims] a voice in the same way”.
“Unfortunately, while being a journalist has become increasingly difficult, being a woman journalist is even more so,” said 27-year-old Temucin, who writes frequently about violence against women and children.
She also blamed a lack of punishment for the perpetrators.
“Perpetrators are able to issue threats and insults so freely because they are empowered by a culture of impunity,” Temucin told BIRN.
“We witness violence against women in all areas of life. The men around them perpetrate this violence, and the journalists who report on it are subjected to digital violence and threats. What we’re dealing with here is a cyclical, chain-like pattern of violence.”
Turkey backsliding on women’s rights
Just as media freedoms have deteriorated over the past decade in Turkey, so too have women’s rights.
Turkey was the first country to ratify the Council of Europe’s Convention on Combatting Violence Against Women, better known as the Istanbul Convention.
But Islamist and conservative critics claimed it undermined traditional family values, and Erdogan overturned the decision in 2021.
According to Anit Sayac, a platform that keeps a record of femicides in Turkey, so far this year, at least 173 women were killed by men; 447 women were killed by men in 2024 and 418 in 2023.
Journalists and media experts complain of a lack of support for female reporters in cases of digital violence, even from their peers.
“I received support from my female colleagues on these matters, but unfortunately, I have to say that voices other than them have been very faint,” Idil said, and called for legal support for those subjected to digital violence, “or at the very least, an approach that conveys they are not alone.”.
Banu Tuna, general secretary of the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, said that the digital violence suffered by women journalists is too often overlooked because of the scale of the physical and political threat to journalists in general.
“Physical violence against reporters in the field is so widespread in Turkey, there’s hardly ever room to even talk about digital violence,” Tuna told BIRN. “Those who are subjected to digital abuse tend to stay silent out of a sense that speaking up would be inappropriate – like stealing the spotlight – while our colleagues are being imprisoned, prosecuted, or subjected to police brutality.”
Digital double standards
Online abuse of women journalists is a global problem, Tuna said.
“This applies to all genders and sexual orientations; however, when it comes specifically to women, digital violence has a distinctly sexist dimension.”
According to a 2022 study conducted by the International Centre for Journalists, ICFJ, in collaboration with the University of Sheffield, more than three-quarters of women journalists across 15 countries have experienced online violence due to their journalistic work.
Of the journalists surveyed, 48 per cent reported being harassed via direct messages on social media platforms, while 20 per cent of those who faced online harassment said it led to physical assault and/or abuse in the real world.
According to Tuna, many Turkish women in the media sector end up censoring their own reporting and social media activity or stop reporting on issues that tend to trigger digital attacks.
“Many women journalists say that after experiencing this kind of violence, they’ve become much more cautious when sharing content or expressing opinions online,” Tuna said. “Some have reduced their posts significantly, while others have gone completely silent on certain platforms. These attacks, especially on women journalists, have a chilling effect. As a result, digital violence also takes on the dimension of an assault on freedom of expression.”
Damla Turhan Durmus, Turkey project coordinator at the Global Investigative Journalism Network, told BIRN that digital attacks come in three main forms: “Insulting comments targeting social media posts, threats and harassment via private messages, and coordinated smear campaigns.”
Durmus called on media outlets to institute procedures for journalists to report the digital violence they suffer and receive psychological support.
“Media organisations and journalists need to develop strong defence mechanisms,” Durmus said. “Currently, media outlets in Turkey have not developed concrete measures to address online harassment and violence,” Durmus said, underlining that most of the support comes from unions and civil society rather than employers.
But the authorities have an obligation to act as well, she said.
“When we examine the recent actions of social media platforms, it’s clear that comprehensive regulatory mechanisms and enforcement protocols are seriously inadequate. This regulatory gap paves the way for online violence to spread and to escalate without any meaningful consequences.”
“While journalists may face legal sanctions for their reporting, those who engage in threats, harassment, and intimidation are often not punished at all. This creates a disturbing double standard in the digital realm.”
Source: BalkanInsight
