Professor Şebnem Korur FINCANCI

Image Credit: evrensel/WikkiCommons

Prominent academic, forensic scientist, and leading human rights defender, Professor Şebnem Korur Fincancı remained on trial throughout 2025 in relation to restrained comments made in 2022 during a live interview regarding the possible use of chemical weapons by Türkiye’s armed forces against members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Arrested on 26 October 2022 on charges of ‘making propaganda for a terrorist organisation’ under Article 7/2 of Anti-Terror Law No. 3713, Fincancı was sentenced to two years, eight months, and 15 days in prison on 11 January 2023. She was freed pending appeal. The case was ongoing as of 31 December 2025 (see Case Lists 2022-2025). In October 2024, another court in Ankara ordered Fincancı to pay TL50,000 (approximately USD1,400) for damage to Türkiye’s Ministry of National Defence’s reputation.  

Fincancı was acquitted on 20 February 2025 of ‘insulting the Turkish nation, the Republic of Türkiye, the institutions and organs of the state’ (Article 301 of Türkiye’s Penal Code), in relation to comments she made in March 2022 on instances of torture and other ill-treatment. Another case alleging that Fincancı had insulted then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the 2013 Gezi Park protests was dismissed on 17 June 2025 on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.  

Former Chair of the Turkish Medical Association and board member of the Human Rights Foundation of Türkiye (HRFT), Şebnem Korur Fincancı has been judicially harassed for years, including in the Özgür Gündem case in which she and co-defendants Erol Önderoğlu and Ahmet Aziz Nesin are undergoing a retrial for acting as guest editors of the Kurdish daily during a country-wide solidarity campaign in 2016. This is despite the court ruling to acquit all three on 17 July 2019. Fincancı was also tried and acquitted for her signature to a 2016 petition by  the ‘Academics for Peace.