Journalist İnci Hekimoğlu detained in dawn raid after being targeted by far-right politician

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Journalist İnci Hekimoğlu was detained yesterday (June 16) in a police raid on her home in the western province of İzmir at around 6 a.m.

Erdoğan Aydoğdu, the attorney of the journalist, told Artı TV that the raid was carried out because of Hekimoğlu's social media posts. Sixteen journalists were arrested in Diyarbakır a day before, he noted.

"As a dissident journalist, İnci was detained this morning in a raid on her home. Sixteen journalists were detained just yesterday. There are detentions in İstanbul and other provinces," he said.

The journalist did not face ill-treatment while being taken into custody, he added.

Released later in the day, Hekimoğlu told Artı TV, "I was picked up at around 5.30 or 6 in the morning. There were seven, eight officers in front of me. But I must say that they were very kind. They didn't come in, they waited for me to get dressed.

"They picked me up pretty kindly. We first had a health check and then went to the Anti-Terror Branch. My statement was taken after a few hours there. Then they decided to release me."

The journalist said she was under investigation for "propagandizing for a terrorist organization" and she was shown four tweets she posted in 2014 and 2015. One of them was about the "resolution process" to the Kurdish question and two were about the 2015 killing of Tahir Elçi, the head of the Diyarbakır Bar, she noted.

She said the police raid came after his words about Ümit Özdağ, an anti-immigration politician who leads the Victory (Zafer) Party.

"The interesting thing here is that during a program about a month ago, when I had said about Ümit Özdağ, 'I don't regard him as a politician, he is a statesman. He has a different identity,' Ümit Özdağ had directly targeted me and his trolls had attacked me," she said.

"They had searched for my tweets from as early as 2014 and 2015 and shared posts targeting the General Directorate of Security and the Ministry of Interior. Those four tweets are the basis of the accusation made against me today.

"Also, it was very clear from the attitude of the officers at the Anti-Terror Branch that they knew I would go there had they summoned me. But I believe that they were forced [to conduct a raid]."

Dawn raids on journalists

President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) AKP Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in March 2021 that dawn raids on journalists would end with a new "Human Rights Action Plan."

However, homes of dozens of journalists have been raided since then, including renowned ones.

CLICK - Dawn raids on journalists in Turkey still continue despite human rights action plan

(RT/HA/VK)