Turkey detains two journalists over an X post about the fund scandal

Turkish police detained two journalists early on October 9 over an X post linked to the country's investment fund scandal. Mustafa Balcı of the pro-opposition newspaper Sözcü and Şaban Sevinç, editor-in-chief of the online channel Bizim TV, are accused of "publicly disseminating misleading information". Prosecutors in Istanbul took them to court the same day and asked a judge to jail them pending trial. A few weeks ago Turkey was blocking X accounts by the hundred over this scandal. Now it is detaining the people who write the posts.

The post that led to the detentions

On October 8 Balcı posted a photo from an August 22 concert in Bodrum. He said it showed Ömer Çelik, spokesman of President Erdoğan's AKP, with Osman Arıkan Nacar, a former health ministry official whose name has come up in the fund investigation, sitting one row behind him. The news site Serbestiyet noted that Balcı's identification of the man has not been independently verified and that the photo alone does not prove any relationship between the two. Balcı announced his own detention on social media. Sevinç was detained after him.

Two more journalists from Sözcü TV, İsmail Saymaz and Murat Ağırel, were summoned to give statements as suspects on the same charge. That case started with a complaint from Trade Minister Ömer Bolat over their remarks on air about who may have profited from the funds. Ağırel said that "relaying a claim as a claim is not presenting it as established fact". The AKP's secretary-general Eyyüp Kadir İnan told NTV that the party faces "a network of lies" and that the opposition "will pay the price for these lies and slanders".

What the fund scandal is about

The crisis broke in mid-September, when investment funds that had poured money into hard-to-sell shares could not pay out withdrawals. On September 17 the Capital Markets Board ordered the liquidation of 131 funds run by seven companies, affecting 455,758 investors, according to Turkish Minute. Prosecutors are investigating alleged market manipulation. Opposition MPs have asked whether ministers or their relatives profited. Both ministers named have denied it, and on October 8 lawmakers from the AKP and its ally MHP rejected five opposition motions for a parliamentary inquiry.

The disinformation law behind the charge

The charge comes from Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code, added in October 2022. It punishes publicly spreading false information about national security, public order or public health "with the sole intent of creating anxiety, fear or panic" with one to three years in prison, and the sentence rises by half for people who run anonymous accounts. The Committee to Protect Journalists counted 16 detentions of 14 journalists under the law in 2026 up to September 4 and found that none of their reporting had caused public fear or panic. The Turkish data project Veriler Ne Diyor estimated in April that at least 83 journalists had been charged 114 times since the law took effect.

The court had not announced whether Balcı and Sevinç will be jailed or released at the time of publication. Their case shows the shift from blocking accounts to prosecuting the people behind them. Hiding a post from Turkish users is no longer the end of it when the author can be identified.