The journalist Ali Tarakcı was remanded in custody by the Ankara 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace on 26 September 2026 and sent to Sincan Penal Institution. The charge is publicly disseminating misleading information under Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code, which carries one to three years’ imprisonment.

The investigation, opened by the Press Crimes Investigation Bureau of the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, concerns a single post on X: “A very important minister will resign on Friday.”

His home was searched and his digital devices were seized. On the prosecutor’s application, the Ankara 7th Criminal Judgeship of Peace ordered an access block on his social media account, which was transmitted to the Cybersecurity Presidency.

In a statement published on her husband’s account, Gülşah Tarakcı said he had not accepted the charge in his statement to investigators, and had declared that the post fell within his journalistic activity and rested on background information from political circles that had reached him. She said he had also stated expressly that there was no risk of flight or of tampering with evidence.

She said the family expects the legal process to be conducted in accordance with the principles of personal liberty and security, proportionality and fair trial. She added that the family will pursue legal and criminal remedies against those who have published material insulting her husband and the family and violating their personal rights.

The text of the remand decision, published by the lawyer Kemal Uçar, lists its grounds. They include the nature of the offence, concrete evidence said to show strong suspicion, Tarakcı’s statements to the prosecutor and to the judgeship, the content of the post and the number of times it was viewed, a determination concerning the climate of public outrage the post created in economic terms, investigation reports, and the search and seizure decision. The judgeship held that remand was proportionate and that judicial control would be insufficient at this stage.

Article 217/A(1) applies to a person who publicly disseminates information contrary to the facts concerning the country’s internal or external security, public order or public health, solely with the motive of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the public, and in a manner liable to disturb public peace.

In his own statement, Tarakcı said that in his assessment certain ministries are more important than others, naming Justice, Foreign Affairs, Treasury and Finance, and the Interior, and that in writing “an important minister” he did not mean any particular one. He said his information did not rest on a single source, and that he had previously posted that Mehmet Şimşek would continue in office.

Article 217/A was added to the Penal Code in October 2022. In an urgent joint opinion issued at the request of the Parliamentary Assembly, the Venice Commission and the Council of Europe’s Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law examined the provision before it was enacted and recommended that it not be adopted, finding its wording insufficiently clear to satisfy the requirement of legality and doubting that it was proportionate or necessary in a democratic society.

The European Democratic Party said on 27 September that Tarakcı faces up to three years and described the case as an escalation in the suppression of dissent.

A journalist is in pre-trial detention over a sentence containing no name, under a provision that requires false information about security, public order or public health, in a decision that cites the economic reaction to his post.