They are accused of terrorist activities. At least nine Turks working for pro-Kurdish media, including eight journalists, were arrested on Tuesday April 23 in Turkey, their employers and lawyers said.
These people, four women and five men, were arrested at dawn in three different cities, the capital, Ankara, Istanbul and Sanliurfa, according to the association of lawyers for press freedom, MLSA. Journalists work for the Mezopotamia news agency or for the newspaper New life. The ninth person is a “press employee”.
Mezopotamia specifies that his journalist arrested in Ankara was arrested during“a police operation at his home”. “MLSA legal unit says journalists are prohibited from consulting a lawyer”writes the NGO on the X network, which was confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) by a relative of one of the journalists arrested, on condition of anonymity.
According to her, the police showed up at this journalist’s home before dawn. The families of the reporters concerned were notified of their arrest “as part of an investigation opened in 2022 for terrorist activities”, explained this woman. Those from Istanbul were being held at a police station on Tuesday, she said.
Searches in Belgium
The press defense organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Istanbul, contacted by AFP, said “monitor the situation closely”.
Simultaneously, the television studios of Sterk TV and Medya News, two Kurdish television channels broadcasting from Belgium, were searched by the Belgian police, these two media announced in a press release sent to AFP.
According to a press release from the Belgian prosecutor’s office released on Tuesday, these searches were carried out ” in the night “, “at the request of French justice”, who seeks to “establish possible evidence of terrorist financing”. It was not immediately possible to establish a link between the arrests of journalists in Turkey and the searches in Belgium.