Communication journalist Necati Özkan, who was detained on charges of "political espionage" along with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, journalists Merdan Yanardağ and Hüseyin Gün, sent a letter from the Marmara Closed Penal Institution on the first year of his detention.
Reminding that he was arrested on October 26, 2025, Özkan argued that the accusations against him in the trial that had been going on for a year did not reflect the truth.
Bringing up the reports regarding the source of the digital data in the indictment and the documents submitted to the court by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Özkan stated that there is no concrete evidence in the file supporting the crime of espionage.
Özkan said, "I want to serve to reveal the truth about this arbitrary persecution that dangerously harms not only me, but also our judicial system, the foundations of our state and our nation."
Özkan stated that the basis of the indictment is the e-mail addresses and passwords allegedly belonging to 17 IMM employees. He reminded that the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office claimed that the 23 June 2019 Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayoral renewal election was manipulated and a crime of espionage was committed by using this information. However, he argued that the official letter sent to the court by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Information Technology Department invalidated the information in the indictment.
Özkan used the following statements in his letter: "The indictment, which collapsed in the first hearing, collapsed once again with the official response letter sent to the court from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Information Technology Department. The letter in question revealed that only 2 of the 17 e-mails that formed the basis of the accusation were real, and only 1 of them belonged to a real person."
Özkan claimed that technical details regarding the passwords of e-mail addresses also contradict the accusations. Özkan stated that according to the official letter of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, at least 12 characters must be used in the passwords of e-mail addresses with municipality extensions for the last 20 years, and that the passwords subject to the indictment consist of only 5-6 characters. Referring to the expert opinion, expert report and Anti-Terrorism Branch report submitted to the file before the first hearing, Özkan argued that the e-mail addresses and passwords in question were not obtained from the IMM database.
According to Özkan, this information was leaked from various private sector websites and became publicly available long before 2019. In his letter, Özkan also stated that the information did not constitute a state secret and claimed that there was no information, document or data that should remain confidential.
Another document that Özkan included in his letter was the letter sent to the court by the IMM Human Resources Department. Özkan stated in this article that it was reported that 16 of the 17 municipal employees who allegedly owned the e-mail addresses in the indictment left IMM long before 2019. He argued that the accusation that the data in question was obtained from the municipality's database in order to manipulate the 2019 local elections contradicted this information.
Necati Özkan also drew attention to another official document he submitted to the court at the hearing dated September 29, 2026. He stated that the document added to the IMM main case file by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office contains the list of personnel authorized to access systems and data in the municipality and its subsidiaries. Özkan claimed that he and the other three defendants on trial in the espionage case were not authorized to access the database.
"Accordingly, neither I nor the other 3 defendants on trial in the so-called 'espionage' case have the 'authority or responsibility to access the database'," said Özkan, and argued that there was no espionage act attributed to him. Özkan stated that the indictment did not reveal any foreign state or organization that benefited from these activities.
Özkan also criticized the trial process in his letter. Arguing that the documents and reports revealed in the first hearing refuted the accusations, Özkan stated that despite this, no decision was made for release. Özkan also criticized the change of the court panel and said, "The court panel was changed in order to keep the course of the case, which collapsed in the first hearing, under control."
Özkan devoted a significant part of his letter to the rule of law and judicial independence, and emphasized that criminal proceedings should be based on concrete evidence. Stating that in the state of law, punishments should be given according to proven actions, not the identity of the person, Özkan said: "If the judiciary goes from 'evidence to the defendant', it means that there is a separation of powers system in that country and the judiciary operates independently."
Özkan argued that a trial system that works contrary to this would mean moving away from democracy, and described the espionage case as the "litmus test" of the understanding of law in Türkiye.
Necati Özkan argued that his one-year detention affected not only himself but also the reputation of the judicial system. "People are mortal, our state is eternal. These days will come and go, the nation will remember these days," said Özkan, and claimed that the case would be considered a negative political legacy for the current government in the future.
Özkan said, "However, a society cannot survive without truth, a state cannot survive without law, and a government cannot survive without justice."
At the end of his letter, Özkan, who once again rejected the espionage charges against him and IMM President Ekrem İmamoğlu, repeated the questions he had also voiced in court: "Are you really saying that Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and I have been spies since 2019, can you hear what comes out of your mouth?"
Özkan continued his words as follows: "It sounds like a joke, but what you call a joke is our reality, we are detained because of this nonsense. Because those who make these allegations say so. We have been 'spies' since 2019 and the state found out about this by chance in 2025, is this the seriousness of the state!"
Stating that he had been in prison for a year and thought that he was punished without being sentenced, Özkan said that he maintained his belief in justice despite what he went through.
