Freedom of expression and human rights organizations from Turkey and around the world have denounced the recent detention of five journalists during house raids in three cities.
Yesterday, Evrim Kepenek, bianet's women and LGBTI+ news editor, Sibel Yükler, a reporter for T24, Delal Akyüz and Fırat Can Arslan, reporters for Mezopotamya Agency (MA), and freelance journalist Evrim Deniz were detained.
While four of these journalists were conditionally released, Arslan was arrested later the same day.
The detentions were related to an investigation into a news report about the reassignment of a prosecutor and a judge, to whom the former is married, by the Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK), involved in the recent court case of 18 journalists in Diyarbakır.
Arslan had published the report and shared it on Twitter and the four other journalists had retweeted it.
The journalists are being accused of "disclosing, publishing and targeting a public official on anti-terror duties" as per article 6/1 of the Anti-Terror Law.
The groups demanded the immediate release of Arslan and called on the authorities in Turkey to "stop abusing anti-terror laws."
"The fact that the prosecutor who prepared the indictment against journalists who were arrested en masse turned out to be married to one of the three judges on the panel of judges of the same case and that this prosecutor and judge were later reassigned is public information and is of public interest," said the statement. "Therefore, reporting and dissemination of such information must be regarded as journalistic activity.
"We stand in solidarity with the journalists in detention and call on the Turkish authorities to stop abusing anti-terror laws, and the arbitrary and systematic detention of journalists."
The signatory groups:
(TY/VK)