WORLD NEWS TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP)-led parliamentary coalition government exert strong control over the media, courts, and most state institutions, regularly sidelining or punishing perceived government critics. Political divisions and power struggles within Türkiye’s top courts and increasing reports of corruption within the state and judiciary have further undermined human rights and the rule of law. Authorities including courts continued to ignore or reject binding judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), finding Türkiye in violation, leading to perpetuation of serious violations. A cost-of-living crisis continued in 2024, with the Turkish Statistical Institute reporting an annual inflation rate of 47 percent in November. Local elections in March saw the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) make the largest gains against Erdoğan’s AKP in over two decades, securing 37.8 percent of the vote nationally against the AKP’s 35 percent and holding on to the Istanbul and Ankara municipalities. Freedom of Expression Government control of the media extends to the public broadcaster TRT and public news wire service Anadolu Ajansı (Anatolian Agency), and the majority of television news channels and print media are government-aligned. Independent media in Türkiye operate mainly via online platforms. Authorities regularly order the blocking of websites and platforms or removal of critical online content or negative news coverage relating to public officials, companies, the president and his family, and members of the judiciary. They typically cite as grounds unspecific threats to national security or public order or violations of personal rights. Constitutional Court decisions published in November 2023 and January 2024 found that two articles of internet law no. 5651 permitting blocking or removal of content on these grounds violate the right to freedom of expression; the January decision repealed the article concerning violations of personal rights. Courts frequently issue blocking orders for multiple accounts in one judgment. The Freedom of Expression Association’s EngelliWeb project announced that as of the end of March Türkiye had blocked over one million websites since the 2007 introduction of the internet law. On August 2, Turkish officials, without issuing specific grounds, blocked the entire Instagram platform for eight days after the presidency’s communications director criticized Meta’s removal of condolence messages concerning the former head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, killed on July 31. Deutsche Welle and Voice of America online news platforms have been indefinitely blocked in Türkiye since June 2022 over their refusal to obtain licenses. They refuse on grounds that licensing would expose them to arbitrary fines and sanctions Türkiye’s broadcasting watchdog regularly issues to online broadcasters not aligned with the government. Journalists regularly face prosecution under Türkiye’s Anti-Terror Law, as well as under criminal defamation and other laws. Kurdish journalists are disproportionately targeted. In July, the Ankara trial of 11 Kurdish journalists resulted in the conviction of eight on charges of “membership of a terrorist organization,” each sentenced to six years and three months in prison. They have appealed the verdicts. The Diyarbakır trial of 20 Kurdish journalists and media workers on the same charges continued. At time of writing, at least 21 journalists and media workers were in pretrial detention or serving prison sentences for terrorism offenses for journalistic work or association with media. Freedoms of Association and Assembly Thousands of people face detention, investigations, and unfair trials on terrorism charges for alleged links with the movement led by deceased US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, which the government deems a terrorist organization responsible for the July 15, 2016 attempted military coup. Many have faced prolonged and arbitrary imprisonment with no effective remedy after mass removal from civil service jobs and the judiciary. The justice minister announced in July that 13,251 remanded and convicted persons alleged to be members of the movement remained in prison. To date the Turkish authorities have failed to implement a key ruling of the ECtHR finding that the conviction on charges of “membership of a terrorist organization” of former teacher Yüksel Yalçınkaya, mainly for having a mobile phone application called ByLock allegedly used by Gülen followers, was an arbitrary application of the law that violated the principle of legality. The judgment also found violations of fair trial and freedom of association rights and ruled that Türkiye needed to implement general measures to address the violations. There were around 8,000 similar cases before the Strasbourg court at time of writing. In Yalçınkaya’s September retrial, a local court disregarded the ECtHR