Four journalists have been arrested in Turkey as part of an investigation centered in the northeastern province of Artvin, following a series of police raids in Istanbul on June 13. Ozan Cırık, a staff member at the independent news platform Sendika.org, was arrested along with fellow journalists Dicle Baştürk, Yavuz Akengin, and Eylem Emel Yılmaz on charges of "membership in a terrorist organization."
Semra Pelek, a former case monitoring coordinator for the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), and Melisa Efe, a translator for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, were released under judicial control, a form of conditional release that typically includes travel bans or regular reporting to authorities.
Lawyers from the MLSA Legal Unit were present during Pelek's interrogation. During questioning, authorities asked Pelek and the other journalists about payments they received for news reports they had written and transactions in their bank accounts, allegedly tied to their journalistic work.
According to a report by the Turkish daily BirGün, Dicle Baştürk’s attorney Yücel Arslan stated, "Journalistic activities and the payments received for these activities were used as evidence of terrorist organization membership, which led to the arrests."
Pelek’s lawyer, Didare Hazal Sümeli, criticized the basis for the case, saying, "There is nothing in the case file beyond journalistic activity."
Background of the investigation
On June 13, six journalists and one other individual were detained in Istanbul and transferred to Artvin. In their statements given the following day, authorities questioned the journalists about software services they allegedly provided to news websites, copyright payments received for their reporting, and their phone communications. After being held in custody for three days, the journalists were brought before a court on June 16, where a prosecutor requested their arrest.
