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Police conducted raids in several Turkish cities on Tuesday and detained 11 journalists affiliated with pro-Kurdish media over their alleged links to Kurdish militants, officials said.
The detentions come days after Turkey approved a controversial new media law that provides for jail sentences for people believed to spread “false information” to cause “public concern, fear and panic.”
Critics of the law say they fear that the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who already controls most of the news media, will further crack down on social media and independent reporting as the country heads towards elections.
The pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency said its editor-in-chief Diren Yurtsever and eight other journalists were taken away for questioning after simultaneous police raids on their homes in Ankara, Istanbul and five other cities.
Two journalists from the Zimbabwe news agency were also detained, it said.
Police confirmed the detentions in a statement on Twitter, saying the suspects were taken away for news or content that “incites public hatred and hostility.”
The Ankara police statement also accused Mezopotamya of operating as a “press committee” for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and described the attack as an “anti-terrorist operation”.
Turkey has been classified as one of the world’s largest prisons for journalists, and at least 35 journalists and other media workers are currently being held under Turkey’s broad anti-terrorism laws, according to the Turkish Journalists’ Union.
The government maintains that the journalists were prosecuted for criminal conduct, not for their journalism.
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