Rabia Çetin
The 13th hearing of the 200,000 Turkish lira compensation lawsuit filed by Serhat Albayrak, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Turkuvaz Media Group, against Evrensel newspaper columnist and academic Ceren Sözeri and against the newspaper Evrensel was held. The hearing was adjourned to 13 May 2026.
At the hearing held before the Istanbul 2nd Commercial Court of First Instance, neither Sözeri nor Albayrak was present, while Sözeri’s attorney Devrim Avcı and Albayrak’s attorney İrem Poyraz attended the hearing. Serhat Albayrak claims that the article titled “Who caused the AKP to lose votes?”, written by Ceren Sözeri and published in Evrensel on 7 April 2019, “damaged his commercial reputation.”
Albayrak’s attorney argued that the publication subject to the lawsuit violated personal rights and requested acceptance of the case. Sözeri’s attorney, Devrim Avcı, on the other hand, stated that the article was an evaluation of election results and that there was no attack on personal rights, and therefore requested dismissal of the lawsuit.
The judge determined that the finalization status of the related case pending before the Istanbul 8th Civil Court of First Instance had not yet become clear. Upon examination through UYAP, it was established that the case file is at the cassation stage before the Court of Cassation. For this reason, the judge ruled that the finalization of the said case file should be awaited, and, if finalized, that the relevant court decision, as well as the decisions of the Regional Court of Appeal (RCA) and the Court of Cassation, be requested to be sent to the file.
