On February 17, Mir Ali Kocer, a Kurdish journalist, was summoned to a police station in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir. Kocer had been covering the aftermath of the earthquakes that had devastated so much of the city, along with a huge swath of the wider region, earlier that month. The police accused him of spreading disinformation, based on his reporting.

Almost two months later, Kocer is still being investigated and does not know if he will be sent to trial under a controversial law, the so-called disinformation law, which criminalizes the spreading of false or misleading information. If convicted, Kocer could face a prison sentence of up to three years.

Critics say the disinformation law, passed in October 2022, is the latest example of the gradual dismantling of democratic freedoms in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has run the country for over two decades now.

As Turkey approaches its presidential election on May 14, the disinformation law, which was used to silence journalists in the aftermath of the earthquakes, casts a shadow over free speech in what some Turkish people see as the most important election in the Republic’s 100-year history.