Merdan Yanardağ, editor-in-chief for the critical broadcaster TELE1, was arrested by an Istanbul court on October 27, 2025, on suspicion of espionage. He has yet to be indicted and properly charged.
Istanbul police took Yanardağ into custody on October 24 as part of a political “espionage” investigation in which the imprisoned Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu is also a suspect. Turkish authorities also assigned a trustee to the critical outlet TELE1 who ended its scheduled broadcasting on the same day.
Yanardağ rejected the accusation of espionage in his testimony to the authorities, stating he did not take money from the government informant who named him as a spy, and that he was being framed. The chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul released a statement on Friday in which Yanardağ was accused of involvement in “election manipulation” alongside the informant.
Yanardağ was previously arrested due to his political commentary in June 2023 and spent 101 days in prison before being handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for terrorism propaganda. He was released in October 2023. On November 3, 2025, Turkey’s Constitutional Court found in favor of Yanardağ regarding the 2023 arrest and granted him financial compensation.
In April 2023, an Istanbul court found Yanardağ guilty of “demeaning” the state and the nation because of a 2021 columnpublished in the leftist daily BirGün and sentenced him to seven years and 15 days in prison. He remained free pending appeal. This verdict was overturned by an appeals court and Yanardağ was acquitted in the retrial in September 2025.
CPJ’s email to the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul asking for comment did not receive a reply.