A local court in southeastern Turkey has acquitted JINNEWS reporter Derya Ren, who was on trial for allegedly insulting police officers during a news assignment in the Nizip district of Gaziantep province. The charges stemmed from a confrontation in January when police stopped her for what they claimed was “reasonable suspicion.”
The second hearing of the case was held at the Nizip 5th Criminal Court of First Instance. While Ren did not attend the hearing, her lawyers, Ahmet Taş and Dicle Aksu, were present. The session was also monitored by representatives from the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) and the Şanlıurfa representative of the Dicle Fırat Journalists Association, Emrullah Acar.
The prosecutor demanded that Ren be convicted of “publicly insulting a public official.” However, her attorney Ahmet Taş objected, saying that Ren had argued with police officers because she was speaking Kurdish, but had not insulted them. On the contrary, Taş said, it was the police who used sexist language against Ren. He noted that an investigation launched into those officers was dropped, and subsequent appeals were unsuccessful.
Taş argued that the remarks allegedly made by Ren did not constitute a criminal offense and pointed to previous rulings in similar cases. He emphasized that the case against his client relied solely on a report prepared by the complainant police officers, which he said should not be treated as sufficient evidence.
Co-counsel Dicle Aksu described the case as flawed from the start. “The investigation was not initiated under orders from a prosecutor, but by police independently collecting information,” she said. “This case should never have proceeded to trial. It was opened using my client’s previous legal history as a pretext.”
Aksu said Ren was searched and detained for hours without justification, and her Kurdish language use was treated as suspicious. “When my client objected to this arbitrary treatment, she was insulted. And yet, she is the one being tried. Her words and actions do not fall under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code. She is a journalist who was on her way to report on a femicide in Gaziantep and was subjected to unlawful police conduct. Since the legal elements of the crime are absent, we demand her acquittal.”
After hearing the defense statements, the court ruled that the legal requirements for the crime of “publicly insulting a public official” had not been met and acquitted Ren.
Background of the case
Derya Ren was stopped by police on Jan. 7, 2025, while traveling to Nizip, a district of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey, to report on a case of femicide. She said officers insulted her and her family during an identity check (known as GBT in Turkey), and when she objected to their language, she was briefly detained on charges of “resisting police.”
Following complaints by four police officers, the Nizip Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into Ren on charges of insult. The case was initially closed due to lack of evidence. However, after an appeal by the police, the Nizip Criminal Judgeship of Peace overturned the decision and prosecutors filed an indictment.
The indictment named four police officers as complainants. It did not include any mention of the officers’ alleged sexist or abusive language, but treated Ren’s alleged remarks as criminal insults.
At the first hearing on May 6, 2025, Ren said in her defense statement, “I was in Nizip for a femicide story. I was kept waiting for hours under the pretext of an identity check. They asked inappropriate questions about my family that only a prosecutor could ask. The officers used vile insults. I denied making any offensive statements. Since the report included words I never said, I refused to sign it.”
