Ömer Çelik, a freelance journalist, is on release pending trial after he was taken into police custody – alongside 14 other Kurdish journalists and a media worker - in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır in June 2022.
In April 2023, after around 10 months in jail, Çelik, 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 Çelik, 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, Çelik and the other defendants remain under a foreign travel ban.
Çelik, a former editor for the shuttered pro-Kurdish outlets Dicle News Agency (DİHA) and Dihaber, and the still-active Mezopotamya News Agency, was working as a freelance journalist in Diyarbakır and producing a political debate show for the local PEL Production Company at the time of his arrest.
PEL 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, his lawyer, Resul Temur, told CPJ.
In December 2016, Çelik was arrested in relation to coverage of the president’s son-in-law’s leaked emails; he was released in October 2017 and received a 20-month suspended prison sentence in late 2021.
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 Çelik, and one media worker were jailed by a court pending trial.
Temur, who represents the 15 journalists and the media worker, told independent news website Bianet in 2022 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.
In a letter published by the leftist daily Evrensel in August 2022, Çelik said he and the other journalists were questioned by the authorities about their work.
Temur told CPJ in an in-person interview in November 2022 that his clients were being held at Diyarbakır Prison and remained under arrest but had not been indicted. He said Çelik suffers from epilepsy.
Diyarbakır courts denied the journalists’ appeals of their arrests and their pretrial detention on August 22 and September 8, 2022.
CPJ emailed the Turkish Ministry of Justice in October 2022 and September 2026 for comment but did not receive any reply.