Defendants: Ayla Albayrak

Media Outlet and Position: Wall Street Journal, Helsingin Sanomat – Correspondent, Freelance Journalist

Accusations: Making terrorist propaganda

Sentence: 2 years 1 month

Court: Gaziantep Regional Appeal Court

Case Background: 

Finnish-Turkish journalist Ayla Albayrak, former reporter of Wall Street Journal and Helsingin Sanomat, was sentenced to two years and one month on October 11, 2017, over her article and video content looking into the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), a Kurdish youth group of separatists in Southeastern Turkey, originally published in Wall Street Journal on August 19, 2015. She has appealed against the sentence in the regional appeal court.

Albayrak had traveled to Turkey’s Silopi town to investigate and write an article for the Wall Street Journal in 2015 summer, including some interviews with politicians, citizens and also a group of militants that are associated with the outlawed PKK.

She was accused of “making terrorist propaganda” over the article ‘ Urban Warfare Escalates in Turkey’s Kurdish-Majority Southeast’ which was later published in many other Turkish news outlets without news organization or author’s consent. Access to pages published in Turkish news outlets were blocked by the Telecommunications Directorate on August 24, 2015, and an investigation launched against Albayrak. A report by the Anti-Terror Police department on October 10, 2016, found that there was no connection between Albayrak and the PKK or its members.

Although the article itself noted that the PKK is a designated terrorist organization by both Turkey and United States, the journalist was handed down a two-year and one-month imprisonment by a Cizre court in Şırnak province.

Third hearing of  her appeal will be held on November 13, 2018, at the Gaziantep Regional Appeal Court, where a final decision on the case is expected.

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