Elif Akgül
Elif Akgül was awarded the Jury’s Special Award category at the Metin Göktepe Journalism Award in 2017.
Elif Akgül is a woman human rights defender and a freelance journalist, whose work covers freedom of expression and gender issues. She is a graduate of the Cinema -TV Department in Istanbul Bilgi University and was the Freedom of Expression editor from 2012-2018 at bianet, a rights-focused news portal. She won the Jury’s Special Award category at the Metin Göktepe Journalism Awards alongside Canan Coşkun for their special report outlining a 10-year chronology relating to Hrant Dink’s murder. She is a co-author of the Gender Focused Journalism Manual, published by the IPS Communication Foundation. She has visited Germany as a fellow journalist under IJP’s Federal President Johannes Rau Fellowship programme in 2018, and gained expertise in digital security as a RSF Fellow in 2022.
Elif Akgül has faced harassment and violence from the police on numerous occasions while covering protests and public statements. In 2023, she was prosecuted under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which criminalises “degrading the Turkish nation, Turkish Republic, its organs and institutions”, for publishing a book review concerning the Armenian Genocide. She was acquitted along with other journalists.
Human rights defenders (HRDs) in Türkiye have been subjected to judicial harassment, including criminal prosecution, violent attacks, threats, surveillance, prolonged arbitrary detention, and ill-treatment. In the aftermath of an attempted coup in July 2016, the environment for the work of HRDs deteriorated even further.
