Researcher Bülent Şık, 27 August 2002. C.ercan, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
A lawsuit was filed against researcher Bülent Şık, after he, in articles for "bianet" and "Cumhuriyet", wrote about research results that were kept secret by the Health Ministry. These results revealed "health-threatening" levels of pesticides and other chemicals in some food and water.
This statement was originally published on bianet.org on 18 April 2025.
Şık was put on trial in 2019 after he revealed the results of a research study conducted by the Health Ministry.
Bülent Şık, a food engineer and a researcher on trial for sharing the Health Ministry’s cancer data with the public, has been acquitted after six years.
During the hearing at the 13th Penal Chamber of the İstanbul Regional Court of Appeals, the prosecutor argued that Şık could not publish the research without the permission of the ministry.
Referring to the protocol between the Health Ministry and Akdeniz University, the prosecutor asked for Şık to be sentenced in accordance with Article 258 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) titled “Disclosure of secrets related to duty.” He demanded 1 to 4 years in prison.
Şık’s lawyer Abbas Yalçın, in his defense against the final opinion, pointed to the Court of Cassation’s decision to overturn the verdict. He said Şık had exercised his constitutional rights. What Şık revealed was not a “state secret,” he argued and demanded Şık’s acquittal.
Announcing its verdict, the court ruled that the...
it made false statements on customs forms to avoid paying tariffs on some imports from China, rejecting the company's argument that the Tariff Act leaves no room to invoke the False Claims Act. . ....