[ad_1]
ANKARA, Turkey — Police carried out raids in a number of Turkish cities on Tuesday and detained 11 journalists affiliated with pro-Kurdish media for his or her alleged hyperlinks to Kurdish militants, officers and stories mentioned.
The detentions come days after Turkey ratified a controversial new media legislation that mandates jail phrases for folks deemed to be spreading “disinformation” for the aim of inflicting “public fear, concern and panic.” Critics of the legislation have mentioned they concern President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authorities — which already controls most information shops — will use it to additional crack down on social media and unbiased reporting because the nation heads towards elections.
The professional-Kurdish Mezopotamya information company mentioned its chief editor, Diren Yurtsever, and eight different journalists have been taken away for questioning following simultaneous police raids on their properties in Ankara, Istanbul and 5 different cities. Two journalists from the JinNews company have been additionally detained, it mentioned.
Police confirmed the detentions with an announcement posted on Twitter saying the suspects have been taken away for information or content material “that incites the general public to hatred and enmity.”
The assertion from the Ankara Police Division additionally accused Mezopotamya of working because the “Press Council” of the banned Kurdistan Employees’ Occasion, or PKK, and described the raids as an “anti-terrorism operation.”
Turkey has been named among the many world’s greatest jailers of journalists, and a minimum of 35 journalists and different media employees are at present in jail below Turkey’s broad anti-terrorism legal guidelines, based on the Journalists’ Union of Turkey. The federal government insists that the journalists are prosecuted for legal acts and never for his or her journalistic work.
The PKK has led an armed insurgency towards the Turkish state since 1984. The group is taken into account a terrorist group in Turkey, Europe and the US.
[ad_2]
Source link
