Selahattin Günday, a former broadcast reporter for the now closed Doğan News Agency (DHA), is under arrest after being detained by Istanbul police on September 10, 2026 as part of a newly reopened investigation into the death of Turkish intelligence operative Kaşif Kozinoğlu in 2011.
On September 12, Günday was arrested on suspicion of exposing an intelligence operative and illegally obtaining personal data while reporting on Kozinoğlu in 2011, his lawyer Hüseyin Ersöz told local media.
On September 15, Günday had a second arrest warrant issued against him, this time on suspicion of "forming an organization with criminal intent."
Camera operator İdris Tiftikçi, who worked with Günday at DHA, was also taken into custody on September 10 but he was released pending trial under judicial control.
Kozinoğlu, who worked for the National Intelligence Organization ((MİT), was arrested in March 2011 and died in prison in November that same year, just days before he was due to testify in the Ergenekon trials, a series of court cases against individuals, including journalists, accused by the authorities of plotting to overthrow the government in a military coup.
According to reports in local media, the accusations against Günday and Tiftikçi relate to their coverage of Kozinoğlu’s appearance at a court in Istanbul after his arrest, with authorities claiming they were the first to broadcast the news in violation of a law relating to publishing information about MİT or its officers.
Ersöz said on social media that the arrest was made under Article 27 of the MİT law, which was altered in 2014 to ban exposing the identities of intelligence operatives, and that in any case the statute of limitations had already passed for the alleged offences.
“An arrest warrant was issued for an act that was not a crime at the time but, in any case, had ‘lapsed under the 15-year statute of limitations,’” Ersöz wrote on X.
CPJ emailed the Chief Prosecutor’s Office of Istanbul for comment in mid-September 2026 but did not receive a reply.