Akgül had spent three and a half months in prison as part of the HDK investigation, in which her professional activities were the subject of allegations

CANSU PİŞKİN, ISTANBUL

The first hearing in the trial of journalist Elif Akgül on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization” was held at the Istanbul 25th High Criminal Court on 30 September 2025.

Akgül and her lawyers were present at the hearing, which was monitored by P24. The hearing was observed by a large number of people, including Erol Önderoğlu, Turkey representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

After her identity was verified, Akgül presented her defense, stating that she was not a member of any terrorist organization, continued as follows: “I would also like to state that I have never seen or heard of any activities of the Peoples' Democratic Congress, whose meetings I attended 13 years ago and whose activities I later followed as a journalist, that could be associated with terrorism or crime. This is the most concise and fundamental response to the indictment.”

She reminded the court that the recordings of telephone conversations in the file dated back 13 years and that these wiretaps could not be considered evidence:

"My lawyers will explain the connection between the judges who issued the wiretap order 13 years ago and the Fethullahist gangs, and the decision in the 17-25 December investigation that these wiretaps cannot be considered evidence. These recordings should have been destroyed years ago. The inclusion of these recordings in the indictment in this manner, making them public, clearly violates my privacy.

"The prosecution has clearly added this document, which violates the confidentiality of communications, to the indictment without any legal or arbitrary explanation. The only thing I can say about these documents is that they are nothing more than common knowledge: These are conversations that do not contain any crime, either I was exercising my right to assembly and demonstration or I was exercising my right as a journalist to inform the public. The only crime related to these conversations is their inclusion in the indictment. And I am not the perpetrator of that crime."

The indictment included six URL addresses in its open-source search regarding Akgül. Akgül said that only three of these six URLs were related to her: "The person mentioned in the URLs listed in the indictment, http://ekmekveozgurluk.net, http://evrensel.net, and http://esp.org.tr, is Elif Akgül Ateş, as stated in the indictment. If you type this person's name into Google, you can see that she is the former Women's Secretary of the Education Union. In other words, all the prosecutor had to do to obtain this information was turn on his computer. This was the minimum action that should have been taken during the investigation. Even this was not done."

Recalling that the indictment against her was accepted in the third month of her detention, Akgül said, "The indictment does not contain any allegations other than the questions asked to me during the police interrogation at the beginning of this period. During this three-month period, the prosecutor's office did not even conduct an investigation or gather evidence, let alone add exculpatory evidence to the file, such as the existing decision that the HDK is not a ‘terrorist organization.’"

Akgül concluded her defense by requesting the lifting of the ban on leaving the country and her acquittal.

The prosecutor, who requested that the file be sent to the parties for the submission of their opinion on the case, requested that the ban on leaving the country continue on the grounds that it was “proportionate.”

Veysel Ok, one of Akgül's lawyers, said, “The prosecutor who prepared the indictment asked the Anti-Terrorism Branch (TEM), 'Does Elif Akgül have any connection to terrorism? TEM sent a document stating that she had no connection, but the prosecutor's office did not use this document in the indictment.”

Batıkan Erkoç, another of Akgül's lawyers, requested the return of digital materials that had been seized but found to contain no evidence of criminal activity.

Tora Pekin, another of Akgül's lawyers, said, "My client was released on 2 June. On the same day, the prosecution objected to the release and requested that she remain in custody. Today, we have seen here that the prosecutor's objection request was wrong. This means that the prosecutor made a request by rote. Today, the request of the prosecutor for the continuation of judicial control is also based on rote." He requested that the ban on his client leaving the country be lifted.

The court, which decided to continue the judicial control measure in the form of a ban on leaving the country, accepted the request for the return of the digital materials that had been copied. It was decided to send the file to the prosecutor's office to file its opinion on the case. The trial was postponed until 4 December.

Background of the case

Elif Akgül was detained on 18 February 2025, during a simultaneous house raid conducted as part of the HDK investigation and was imprisoned pending trial on 21 February.

In her police statement, Akgül was questioned about wiretaps and open-source research dating back to 2012. One of the phone conversations Akgül was accused of was related to the police intervention at the DİSK building on1 May 2013, Labor Day. In the conversation, Akgül was informing her colleague at the computer about what was happening. In a conversation dated 3 June 2013, Akgül was again talking to her colleague from Bianet news site.

The indictment against Akgül was completed on 24 April and sent to the Istanbul 25th High Criminal Court. The court returned the indictment on the grounds that the connection between Akgül and Mehmet Saltoğlu, the other suspect in the indictment, had not been established. The prosecution then appealed the return decision to the Istanbul 26th High Criminal Court, a higher court. The Istanbul 26th High Criminal Court upheld the prosecution's appeal and accepted the indictment.

After a return and appeal process lasting more than one month, the Istanbul 25th High Criminal Court accepted the indictment and decided to release the journalist on 2 June, taking into account the time Akgül had spent in custody and the fact that most of the evidence had been gathered.