The simultaneous arrests of four journalists this morning (July 25) has targeted several of Turkey’s major independent media outlets. Bianet editor Evrim Kepenek, T24 editor Sibel Yükler, and Mesopotamia Agency correspondents Delal Akyüz and Fırat Can Arslan were all taken into custody Tuesday morning.
Police reportedly arrived at Evrim Kepenek’s home in İstanbul’s Çukurcuma district around noon, where they were refused entry by Kepenek and several friends. After the police request to search the home was denied, a local neighborhood authority (muhtar) was called to the scene, where the police proceeded to search the home without waiting for the arrival of Kepenek’s lawyer. During the search, all of Kepenek and her sibling’s digital materials were taken by police. Kepenek herself was then taken into police custody in plastic handcuffs.
T24 editor Sibel Yükler, meanwhile, was taken into custody in Ankara on Tuesday morning, while Mesopotamia editor Delal Akyüz was arrested in İzmir.
The arrests of Yükler, Akyüz, and Arslan were reportedly related to Twitter retweets from the three journalists that were accused of “targeting officials who are engaged in a struggle against terrorism”. Akyüz specifically was taken into custody Tuesday morning because he had shared information on Twitter related to the reassignment of an attorney who’d prepared an indictment targeting 18 journalists from the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.
The three independent news agencies have all been previous targets of police raids and arrests. In March, Bianet’s Kurdish-language editor Aren Yıldırım was detained following a police raid on his home. He was released from police detention two days later.
On April 25, shortly before Turkey’s May 2023 general elections, mass arrests targeting Kurdish politicians, journalists, lawyers, and artists were carried out in Diyarbakir, leading to the detention of some 125 individuals. The official reason for the detentions was given as ‘suspected organization membership’.
Turkey is currently ranked by Freedom House as ‘not free’, with a 2022 score of 32/100 based on significant limitations to political rights and civil liberties. A law passed in October 2022 known as the ‘disinformation law’ introduced a prison sentence of up to three years for individuals convicted of posting false information on social media. İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of Turkey’s most prominent opposition figures, was convicted in December 2022 for insulting state officials, a conviction that threatens to ban him from politics should his appeal process be unsuccessful. Businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala, as well as former People’s Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, have been imprisoned for years in cases ruled as ‘politically motivated’ by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has demanded their release.
Written for Medyascope by Leo Kendrick
