Serdar Altan, the former co-chair of the Dicle Fırat Journalists Association (DFG), a press freedom group, and a TV show host for the local PEL Production Company, was among 15 Kurdish journalists and a media worker who were taken into police custody in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır in June 2022 and were jailed without charge pending trial.
In April 2023 after around 10 months in jail, Altan, the 15 others who were detained alongside him, plus three other journalists, who were not arrested, were indicted on the charge of “being a member of a (terrorist) organization”. Their trial began on July 11, 2023, in Diyarbakır and the next day, it was reported that 15 of the defendants, including Altan, were released pending the outcome of the trial. Another defendant, Safiye Alagaş, was earlier released pending trial in June. The trial continues in Diyarbakır with the next hearing set for November 10, 2026.
As of August 2026, Altan and the other defendants remain under a foreign travel ban.
Altan has worked at several pro-Kurdish outlets as an editor, including the daily Özgür Gündem, Dicle News Agency (DİHA) and Van TV, all of which have been shuttered by the government decrees. Altan also hosted a political debate show in Kurdish for the PEL Production Company, which produces Kurdish-focused journalistic content, including documentaries and shows on news, culture, arts, and political debates, and sells the content to European-based, pro-Kurdish broadcasters, according to Altan’s lawyer, Resul Tamur.
Case history
In the early hours of June 8, 2022, Diyarbakır police raided several locations in the city, including journalists’ houses and newsrooms and took into custody 20 journalists and media workers, along with a citizen who was once interviewed by one of the journalists. On June 15, 15 of those journalists, including Altan, and one media worker were jailed by a court pending trial, while the others were freed.
Gülsün Altan, the journalist’s wife, told online newspaper Gazete Duvar in an August 23, 2022 interview that the police came to their house around 4:45 a.m., took Altan into custody, searched the house for two hours, and confiscated two cell phones and one CD with photographs in it.
In an August 10 letter published on the DFG website, Altan said the authorities questioned him and the other journalists about their work.
Tamur, who represents the 15 journalists and the media worker, told independent news website Bianet that his clients were questioned about the angle they took on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a militant group and political party that Turkey classifies as a terrorist group, and whether the content the journalists created for broadcast by European outlets was considered pro-PKK. Most of the journalists either work for pro-Kurdish media outlets or independent production companies that provide content for other outlets, according to news reports and CPJ’s interviews with local journalists.
Diyarbakır courts denied the journalists’ appeals of their arrests and their pretrial detention on August 22, 2022, and September 8, 2022. Tamur told CPJ in early November 2022 that his clients were being held at Diyarbakır Prison.
CPJ emailed the Turkish Ministry of Justice in October 2022 and August 2026 for comment but did not receive any reply.